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Heard very mixed things about the budget manfrotto heads and I had some bad experiences with manfrotto legs (especially the mid-spreader) so I ended up going with the Benro S6 kit yesterday.
Still not sure about keeping it though. Fluidity and build seems very nice but I am experiencing a bit of elastic springback when panning to the right and the lack of pan drag adjustment could become a problem for me as I plan to use the head in fairly hot conditions where the pan action might be too loose. The legs seem very solid and stable in spite of their being photo legs. Also, they go extremely low (the center column can be flipped if one needs to go even lower (mounting camera upside down and flipping footage in post)
All in all, if I can solve and/or live with the pan situation the tripod seems rather perfect for me until I can afford a Sachtler or something similar.

Good points Walter, didn't think about the aspect of those photo legs not having good torque resistance. I am going to the shop to test-drive it tomorrow. My problem is that the Sachtler ace is on backorder, so I wount be able to compare the two. I guess I could keep on renting/borrowing until then. As to the price/class jump from the Benro to the Sachtler, I normally buy either cheap budget or semi-pro and try to avoid the in-between. I find that this makes for less buyers-remorse

Not sure if its appropriate to talk about gear that is is totally unrelated to ML, but I feel a sense of kinship with the user-base here, so it seems natural to pose gear questions. If you think that we should only talk about ML related Hardware and Accessories, just say the word and I'll get back in my box
As the title indicates, I am looking to invest in my first "real" tripod and I suspect that the related considerations could be relevant at some point for other users here.
So, tripods... chepo budget or "pro" budget?
I have been using a horrible weifeng 717 at home and an older Manfrotto at work.
I recently discovered the brand "Benro" and I find the price/feature-set of the Benro A3573F S6 kit very appealing. I am however a bit sad about the lack of Pan drag adjustment compared to the equivalent Manfrotto kit. Even more so, I worry that buying low-end will lead to frustration in the long run and that it might be better to get a a Sachtler Ace on credit.. Any informed opinions on this dilemma?
Benro A3573F-S6: 260€
Manfrotto MVK502AM 470€
Satchler Ace M 600€

I don't understand why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Upon my first test of the bleeding 1.2.3 ML, DSLR controller was fully functional for a several shots, then suddenly, it went"back" to freezing all the time as I used to experience on 1.1.3..
I guess this is something that would be best looked into by chainfire? (the dslrcontroller dev)
Edit: Forgot to specify that I am using nexus 7 and that whereas Monitoring .raw and .mlv doesn't work, h.264 works just fine.

magiclantern-Nightly.2014Mar17.5D3123 running on Sandisk xtreme UHS 16GB - CF: Komputerbay x1000 64GB exfat quick format
(i) First 50GB of shooting, monitoring on nexus 7 (DSLRcontroller) worked flawlessly, then started crashing alot. (on 1.1.3 it usually crashes alot from the beginning)
(ii) This build seems to have had an effect on my setup in terms of writing speeds.  I can barely get 1920x1080@25fps continuous with all hacks off and GD on.
Low level format and full ML reset does not seem to have an effect of any of the issues I am experiencing. Having some odd numbers in my benchmarks (not sure if posting these has any relevance) - will do some more comprehensive testing later.
So far, I have observed that there is a big difference in bench speeds between 1080/25 and 720/50 (in canon menu) all other things being equal. (720~65mb/s - 1080~85mb/s)  (this might be expected behavior, but I only did a bench in 720 recently)

(iii) Getting some Err 70 and Err 80 once in a while that require battery pull - have not been able to determine the conditions but they are much more frequent than they ever were on 1.1.3

Having a hard time determining a  good testing methodology. Would it make sense if we compile a standard list of testing parameters? This could improve both testing and the posting of results.
(Edited out some tired nonsense

Should we post testing feedback in this thread or in the original 1.2.3 thread or in the nightly thread frfrom now on?

magiclantern-v2.3.NEXT.2014Mar14.5D3113 running seemingly very stable and without any noticeable glitches so far

No matter what I do, I am unable to repeat the problem.
I have tested with a selection of nightly builds from the last 4 months, and I have not yet had the same frustrating stribes as seen in the test footage I linked in one of the above threads. I could go through some of the early builds that I used when I had the issue, but as that would mainly be an academic exercise, I don't see much point in that.
With this issue hopefully solved (fingers crossed) I am ready to use ML RAW video as soon as I get a project where the budget allows for the workflow
@arrinkiiii : If you still have issues with banding, could you post an example and upload a a DNG?

Someone is in a bad mood I guess...
I don't agree that its easy to find info on donating, if it had been easy, I would not have started a thread about it, and you would not have needed to get upset about something I wrote 3 months ago.
I see people asking about donations in alot of different threads on a regular basis. We're not all "in the loop" and seemingly some of us wasn't sure that Bitcoin is the only way to donate. Now we know, thanks

I think that this a very productive development which could greatly add to the maturity of ML.
Especially the aspect of /2, making it easier to get started on developing appeals to me (and surely many other lurking potential contributors)

Seems that the best way to donate for at the moment is to become skilled enough in Coding to help the main devs With some of the tedious Coding tasks and/or do some systematic testing.
On that note, i wonder how people would feel about donating by hiring some programmers from a low-income region to do some serious bug hunting to push more stable versions and make ports to new cameras/ new fw etc. (I know that the idea is a highly problematic and it arose as a joke between friends in light of some recent scandals in which top programmers in huge corps were caught outsourcing their jobs privately to India while spending their own day playing angry birds

The nightly ML recently regained  the ability to load .INI for tweaks to h264. Not sure about theactual benefits. Gonna do some testing when i find the time

I am still confused when it comes to manipulating h264..
Are there ways to utilize the "load h.264.ini" found in the ML nightlies? Or are you rather talking about a different set of options found in the TL?
Anyone had any positive results tweaking the 5Dmkiii h.264 ? Can't really figure out if this approach was abandoned due to the awesomeness of RAWvideo or simply because it didn't improve much.

On my end yes but there was only limited feedback. In the nightlies, no. Look at the ivaparam thread.

Didn't manage to locate that thread in my searches. Any chance you remember where it's at?
EDIT:Were you referring to this thread?

Any thoughts on the timeframe for useable implementations?
During this years perhaps?
After finally learning to achieve a higher quality of my grades I continue to get frustrated when I convert to web delivery ..

I am just about as eager to help as I am clueless about writing code, but I am very fast learner and I studied logic syntax quite extensively as a part of my philosophy master so I just need a nudge in the right direction.
Anyone care to link me a few resources for getting started?
(I know that a quick google search is easy, but I tend to OD on information, and sometimes it takes a certain level of knowledge to distinguish good/relevant material from the less good

Nope, it's not "just" that, it *is* that :-> ... as written, for some people quickly blind-switching settings is essential, look at the pro camera bodies (1d, d4, ...) for proof of that. Pressing the top meter button & cycle to spot (among 4 modes that wrap around) is no option if in a big hurry.

This.
Even some small clever workarounds could benefit us in situations where timing and reaction is of the essence.
Looking forward to seeing your implementation when/if you find time for it.
As to the OP, is the spotmeter AF linking on the 1DX associated with its different metering system?

Blackmagic RGB QT, with Trillons Color That' the close to the raw as a Video clip on the PC,
for editing.

Any thoughts on BM RGB QT vs DNxHD?

I never uploaded further examples seeing as I haven't had any banding issues with builds form august and later Yay

Any thoughts on system load implications of a native Raw workflow?
What kind of specs are we talking for realtime playback with and without CUDA/openCL?

Trying to absorb the information in this thread, I am still unsure if less frames when recording mlv as opposed to raw is to be expected or not.
In raw, I can do 48fps in 1920x672 continuous on my Komputerbay 1000x 64. With mlv, I get around 10-15 seconds depending on other settings before the first frame drop. This is without card spanning. Te mlv format is quite the upgrade imo. I don't really need sound, but the meta data surely is useful! Thanks

I'm using the Dec 27th build and sometimes i have to remove and return the battery for the camera to boot (simply switching it on and off doesn't help) does anybody else have this issue?

I currently started experiencing the same or a similar issue when shooting MLV. My camera freezes with Err 70..
So many things change all the time that causal determinations becomes rather tricky.
I believe I am on the dec 12 build. Lurencos last build from the autum 2013 worked well for me, but I changed to a newer build to test MLV. Seeing as Lourenco seems to have stopped updating the builds, has anyone taken over that task or do you guys "just"  play around with nightlies now?
Another thing, do we discuss MLV here as well or should that be reserved for the dedicated MLV thread?

Noticed that this thread has become fairly inactive?
Have most ppl switched to a different app?

Ahh, great stuff, I guess this thread should be deleted

Couldn't find any discussions of this even though I have a feeling that it must have been debated already.
As the title suggests, it would be awesome if we could get Exposure compensation in Manual mode.
Amongst other things, it would make manual ETTR with autoISO so much easier.
Personally, this would be of great benefit for me when I shoot dance and acrobatics and it is my understanding that the BIF people would benefit greatly from it as well