Messages

Would it be better if this would be the home page instead?

http://wiki.magiclantern.fm/faq

I think it's better to leave the home page as it is BUT you could add a visible button like "What is Magic Lantern?" that is linking to the FAQ.

Yeah I agree with Alex about the visibility.

This is not just dependent from your optics but also where you are at. It helps a lot if the sky is not brightened by street lights and the less atmosphere above you that's blocking starlight the better. So it's ideal to film somewhere on a mountain in the wilderness.
But to speak about your camera setup I don't really know what settings you should use. I just open up the arperture, lower down the ISO to 100 and drop down the shutter speed until I can see something. Try something like 0.2 fps and a 360° shutter. If you still can't see anything you need to take photos with a very long exposure.

you can make cropmarks yourself. you need to make a new image (720x480) and then draw whatever you'd like to. after that you need to indicate your color palette. with that you decide how your images colors will look like on the camera. after that save it as an 8-bit bitmap. now you already can use it. if you want to compress your cropmark though you can use "convert.rb" to make the size very small (usually 3-10kb).
Tutorial: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Cropmarks

if you're referring to the contrast of the footage: the common media players all have got an own gamma setting. you need to change the gamma curve if it's possible

You need to set "ML digital ISO" to a negative value. This way you will see that in the live view the ISO value will turn green with a little "eq" next to it. But be aware that on very low ISOs the highlights get a little bit pink. You can color correct them or just don't use ISO 25 if you don't know how to remove the pink and you don't like how it's looking.
But it's a very nice feature to go that low in video mode

I had a dream last night (not joking) for a new ML feature...I know it is somehow StarTrek, but here it is:
Special sound triggered Remote control, which corresponds to certain frequencies and Run favorite ML commands...and the rest is off course imagination, but Alex and the rest of ML Dream team are already made some unimaginable things to reality.
(Maybe with a glass of "Rakija" – remember? ;  and hey...this is not something new)

lol that's interesting If you want to filter out special frequencies of a frequency spectrum you need to apply a Fourier Transformation

Alright, so I might need some help. Could you tell me where exactly I can find the code for the vectorscope and for the histogram? I want to take a look at how the chroma and luma data is getting detected and processed.

I guess the complaints of people were caused because they were playing with the ML menu all the time. With my 550D it's the same: If you just go through the menu and test some features and turn them on and off and on and so on... the camera gets a bit hot and the batery is dead after about a bit more than an hour.
But when I used ML for a little photoshoot I once set my settings and voila, the camera was able to shoot the whole evening with one battery life.

yes

Nothing really. it's just a release candidate with some bugfixes for the upcoming v2.3. but it has got a lot of new features compared to the xmas edition

btw. you can always check this to see what's going on

[estimate]

Can't you just use fast zebras + histogram? Fast zebra are cpu-free and show a better overview of what's wrong

Yeah sure I can also use the zebras and I do use them quite often. They show a very good overview of which areas are wrong but then, still you can just estimate how much of your image is properly exposed. With the additional bars you get let's say a "summary" of your under-, over- and properly exposed spots. This is quite a good, fast and accurate help to decide how to expose in difficult shots with a lot of contrast.

The current dots are displayed when percentage exceeds a given threshold - look in the submenu.

But I think you really need log display for the percentage.

Yes, I know about the dots. They are very helpful, too and I never turn them off. The bars go a step further and tell how far the histogram is pushed out of the limits.

I worked with this kind of bars on a rented Red EPIC-X for the first time and it was such a nice addition to the histogram. It sped up the time I needed to get the right look a lot (even when zebras were active). It is a great way to get an exact balance between under/overexposure and I thought this might be a great addition to ML as well. That's why I made this feature request.

If the workload of programming it bothers you I can try to learn it a bit better and try to program this myself. I just need to know if there might be a chance of including it into the firmware once you get the finished code. I don't want to do a lot of work for it which is already doomed to get abandoned
Is the language used by ML C or C++ ?

[enable two bars]

This is my concept:
In the histogram menu you can enable two bars which will show up on the left and right side of your histogram. The left one will show the percentage of underexposed pixels in your footage and the right one will show the percentage of overexposed pixels in your footage. You can also set a threshold to choose if a pixel is under-/overexposed (like for the zebras).
It might look like this:



I already thought a littlebit about the algorithm to calculate the percentage for a bar. Unfortunately I am not experienced with programming so I can only show you my ideas. But I'd be happy to help out in any way possible if you all find this idea interesting.
As an example I will show you the (mathematical) algorithm for the overexposure bar for one frame (underexp. is analog to this).


- - - - -


The ratio R of overexposed pixels n compared to the full resolution N in the footage that will be displayed in the bar is given by


whereas the resolution N in the footage is given by its width x and height y


To tell if a pixel at position (i,j) is overexposed (greater than a threshold T) or not we now define a function tau which is 1 if the pixel's brightness B(i,j) is greater than T, else 0


Now we look at each pixel and add 1 to the total number of overexposed pixels n if it's overexposed


Now that we can calculate n let's throw it all together to the final formula to display the percentage R of overexposed pixels shown in the bar


In words: Count overexposed pixels line by line and compare it to the overall amount of pixels.
Btw. if it needs too much processing power we could approximate it and only look at the center pixel of a 3x3 or 5x5 area for example. It would only take up about 1/9 or 1/25 processing power this way and would be still very precise.

- - - - -


Negative:
- May need some processing power (maybe, I don't know)

Positive:
- You can see how many percent of the histogram's area is cut off
- Great overview of the amount of under-/overexposed areas
- The underexposure bar can also be an indicator for how much noise you can see in your shot
- You can quickly balance your settings (ISO, Aperture, Exposure, variable ND filter) for a combination of minimal underexposure and overexposure in contrasty shots (optimize dynamic range)


Tell me what you think about this idea.


- - - - -


Index:

That doesn't work while recording on my 550D. And still if it was possible it could be pretty unhandy to hold down the shutter button halfway during long recordings. Plus there is the danger of accidentially taking a photo while recording.

[choose whether you want to only see the dark frame, to only see the bright frame, or to see it flicker while recording.]

Since it is possible now to have a flicker free screen while recording I want to suggest this option for a later version of ML:

Right now while recording the screen is alternating between ISO A and ISO B in a few seconds period. It would be nice to choose whether you want to only see the dark frame, to only see the bright frame, or to see it flicker while recording.

The new entry consists of 3 or 4 options like this:

- - - - -

Show frame:
- A
- B
- Alternate slow
- Alternate fast

- - - - -

"A" only shows ISO A while recording
"B" only shows ISO B while recording
"Alternate slow" is alternating between ISO A and ISO B like in v2.3
"Alternate fast" is alternating like in earlier versions

What do you think about the idea of adding this new entry to the HDR submenu?

It just means that if it's enabled your powersafe settings also are enabled whle recording. For example your display will also dim while recording and not just in standby.

Wow, just wow 

Is the first shot CG or did you really fly that low with a camera?

oh i see. i didn't recognize it's alternating between them.

Is it intendet that the fast zebras are flashing on and off every 2 seconds?

I thought he meant 24.000 fps with fps override

Of course. Have you ever taken a look into the ML menu?

seriously if you want to use magic lantern never use the "auto" function. set it so "manual" and set all functions to your liking at it works like a charm =)

what do you mean? this is already possible. just modify the iso values in the menu

i love the idea of some skins you can choose from. that'd be perfect

Until now I like this version the most

IMO the top bar does look nicer without a gradient because you can really see the separation to the rest of the menu items. The same thing applies to the bottom bar with the help messages. it's separated from the menu items. the contrast is very good as well.

But i don't like the idea of a multi-colored menu. it looks a bit like a toy in my opinion. that's what i don't like about the canon menu as well. keeping constant colors makes it look a bit more "professional" i think. but of course it's just my opinion and it would not be the end of the world if the menu gets multiple colors