Topics

Let's restore ML help together!

Currently, if you press the Info button while in ML menu, you get "Undocumented feature". This shouldn't be the case. Until version 2.3 there where nice help texts. We should restore them for the current releases.

4 years ago Redrocks started the User Guide thread for the latest nightlies. After a good start it went inactive, probably because the update mechanism was too tedious.

A wiki is much easier to edit. I've transferred the texts from that thread to the ML wiki, which anyone can edit who also can write here, the credentials are the same. The more important part is camera help the other one general help

Goals
In my opinion the first goal should be to provide in-camera help. Have you ever been out in the field without internet access and you didn't get a needed function explained? With internet access it's always possible to find information, but in-camera help is essential and overdue.  Later on we can see, if and how we make this a good online user guide.

What can be done by anyone

• Go through the text and see whether it would be helpful under the premise that you know little about that function.
• A lot of sections where copied from the help that is already provided on the bottom of the ML screen. This need to be expanded, since there is no point duplicating this information.
• Some sections are not available any more, have moved to a module or where renamed. Those need to be corrected.
• As a first measure mark that sections as INCOMPLETE. How to do this is explained on top of the page. Of course you can also start to improve them right away.
• Look for sections marked as INCOMPLETE and improve them. Remove the INCOMPLETE comment once you're satisfied.
• Don't be afraid to edit something. It's a wiki, your edits will be reviewed and corrected if necessary. You also can add further comments to the section to ask for comment,  help or review.

Although the current text is pretty large it's better considered a framework to be filled.

What more is needed?
Apart of that I'd like to discuss how we can proceed. Please make this thread sticky instead of the User Guide thread and point to it from various places, namely from https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=12657.0 and from the User Guide thread itself. 

I'd also like to discuss the format and the future use. Once it is more up to date it should be used f.e. as a target on the feature matrix, which currently still uses the 2.3 user guide.

I have some experimental PHP code that splits the wiki article into files, one for each main menu point, and converts the content to RST format, much like the old menu text files in the /doc/ folder on bitbucket. This code could be turned into a dokuwiki plugin which writes those files on any save, but other uses are also possible.

I like Alex' proposal to embed the help texts in the source code in order to have them up to date more likely, for which a text only format would be probably better. In the end there should be a two-way exchange: The wiki text should update the embedded help and vice versa. There is already some python code in the /doc/ folder on bitbucket that can convert RST to dokuwiki text, so that way should be possible too.  Someone familiar with bitbucket could certainly automate both import and export.

And last but not least many agreements are necessary to have a uniform help file. F.e. the menu topics that are added by modules are listed under the respective menu but should be marked clearly as such.

A lot of work to do, but for a healthy community like this one it should be doable. What do you think?

Hello,

Is anyone working on rebuilding the in-camera help files? I'd like to estimate whether it would be possible for me to help. What would it take to do something here?

Erik

Hello,

is there a way to use AETTR and record the deviation of a preset exposure in XMP?

If I f.e. set exposure to f/8, 1/100, 100ISO and AETTR changes exposure to f/8, 1/200, 100ISO for one image and f/8, 1/100, 100ISO for the next could ML then write a XMP that causes the images to look equally exposed in ACR / Lightroom, even if image content is totally different? I know the deflicker module can do it, if the image content doesn't change much (exposure normalization), but that's not the point.

Hello,

I tried aettr with deflicker module for exposure normalization. aettr works a treat! But if I use the XMP with Adobe Camera Raw the exposure correction value has the wrong sign. If I understood correctly the XMP data should cause all images shot with the same ettr settings to be of visually equal brightness. However, they came out very different. But if I change the sign of the correction, they look the same.

F.e. for one image ACR showed +0.04 EV and +1.31 EV for the other. The second image was much brighter than the first. When I change the values to -0.04 and -1.31 both images appear to have the same brightness.

Do I use the XMP files the wrong way (loading the corresponding CR2 files into ACR loads the XMP files automatically) or is this a bug?

magiclantern-Nightly.2015Nov07.5D2212, photoshop CS6 with ACR 9.1

best regards
Erik

I've read that sound recorder was disabled for safety reasons: https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/commits/4ba0f1c0909dcdf505765e6d326e09ebd229064f
Is there a chance it will be back soon?

Would be very nice!
Erik

Hello,

some analog EOS cameras like f.e. the old EOS 5 featured DEP mode (not the almost useless A-DEP of later models). You could use an AF field to focus the far point on first half shutter press, then focus the near point on next half shutter press, then point to the desired view and press shutter to release. The camera calculated the necessary values for aperture, exposure time and focused the lens to the appropriate DOF distance.

I found this a very useful feature and never understood why Canon didn't use it in the following models or replaced it with A-DEP where it isn't possible to choose near and far point on your own.

Would this be possible in ML?

More on DEP (and A-DEP): http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/dep.shtml

Would it be possible to copy ML to another memory card? Similar like when formating a card?

best regards
Erik

Hello,

ML 2.3 doesn't seem to recognize if M mode is recorded in one of the custom modes C1 to C3 on the EOS 5D II. This causes HDR bracketing not to work in C1 to C3.

I was told some time ago that this is a ML bug. Does anybody know whether this bug is fixed in an experimental build and eventually could point me to a working version?

best regards
Erik

Hello,

http://wiki.magiclantern.fm/start has probably been spammed. I don't think a german text about Kleiderschränke is the correct content :-)