dfort's experiments for 7D Mark I

[domo94]

Hello guys,

Since I'm a 7d Mk i user, I decided to post this here.

For those consistently using the 7d mk i, I have the VAF filter up for sale, it's in great condition, still clear, no scratches, still have the box, cloth, and tweezers.

My 7d is reaching it's life span and my CF card broke. I don't have anymore intention or drive to work on the 7d and I need to get a camera that's consistent and reliable. I also need one that produces an image that's acceptable in low light.
I've not found any time or need to keep using my camera so I'd rather sell the VAF filter to somebody who is still interested in this beautiful camera/ software.

I love the VAF filter a ton, but it's just time to say goodbye.

The website sells it for $295.
I can let it go for $200 as it's been used and definitely wiped down and cleaned.
Shipping included.

Email me at lifestyledq@gmail.com about it, thanks!

[PaulHarwood856]

Hello domo94,

    I just sent you an email regarding the VAF-7D.

- Paul

[domo94]

Would anybody be willing to buy the canon 7D as well?

It works, great for testing purposes for when you wanna be worry free on a build.

It’s got a few several hot pixels that show up, especially on raw.

Still works great, it’s been taken care of.

Fell once and cracked the top left of the screen, but it’s unobtrusive, with a corner scuff on the body.
Can include (non branded) batteries, charger, strap, and cap. No card(it broke on me).
The core basics, not an issue.

I wish I could justify using this but I have no other work camera now, and I need something that people won’t say- oh that’s old.

Might switch to Fujifilm.
I need faster workflow.

Again - Lifestyledq@gmail.com

(I’ll be using a t2i still for fun!)

[domo94]

I've been so discouraged when my 128 GB CF failed on me. My main lenses are both broken and unusable.
I was getting too many bad pixels, my low light was nothing compared to Sony. Not to mention I lost all my batteries except one.
I retired the 7D, or so I thought.

I've been letting a friend use my t2i as of recently, I've been left with no choice but to use my 7D.
I've had terrible months since September. I can't upgrade my gear. I decided to sell the anti-aliasing filter for cash flow. I sold my rig to my friend with the Sony. I sort of just dismissed all my gear.

A friend invited me to a shoot a shoot and realized I had enough to salvage parts make a mini rig. I decided to buy a couple pieces of equipment (a 1/4 screw and 64GB Sandisk CF for $40!!), and I've been using my 7D.

I told myself I wouldn't be filming in RAW anymore because it was just not producing the images the way I wanted/needed them to.
I have no clue how I was doing anything wrong when I was properly exposed on the camera, but my imagery always came out dark with the magic lantern.
The anti-aliasing filter was just too much to manage and some of my lenses didn't sit well with it.

I saw a video a while ago of super sharp t2i footage and the person basically just bumped up the bitrate recording setting. I decided to do the same with the 7D instead so I can get more space out of my card and more reliable footage.
Filming RAW was extremely experimental. I did get some good footage, but overall, RAW really did slow me down a lot- might as well just get a black magic cinema cam for that big boy stuff.

I decided to use my 7D again. See what I could rebuy for cheap/used to have resource.

I'm gonna be not using RAW anymore and just film normal with a higher CBR bitrate for filming. Hopefully 2.0 will work well.

Today I did 1.8 and it was smooth, let me tell yah.

[SourMashII]

Maybe this should have been its own thread? but I'm a 7d.. so here we go. I've downloaded the Nightly build, and my CF card won't recognize it in-camera. Mac shows me it's on the card, but the camera doesn't. I did end up on Canon 2.06 out of the whole thing. so not all is lost.. Help?

[Walter Schulz]

Sorry, your description lacks detail.

If you want to use an official nightly build you have to downgrade to 2.0.3 first (as described in intallation instructions). If you want to use firmware 2.0.6 you have to use dfort's custom build https://bitbucket.org/daniel_fort/magic-lantern/downloads/
If there are errors you may have to add some details:
Full error description, maybe screenshots, name of build used... Be precise!

[Biojack]

Hi all, haven’t been on the ML forums in years but I’ve got two 7D Mark I and I’m thinking Magic Latern might be useful for a new project. I’ve just spent many hours trying to figure out what is possible with ML these days and there is so much info on here... I’m not sure if I’m wasting my time in 2020 or of I’m on the right track with trying to give a new life to the gear we already own...


Question 1: I can’t seem to find a clear answer for is what memory card we need.  We have old Sandisk extreme 32GB at 60 MB/s. I understand these would limit what we can do with magic lantern.  If I want to upgrade, what would you recommend? Do I need the 160mb/s Sandisk or would the 120 MB/s do just fine? I would rather get the cheapest cards that would work and be reliable. Also, Would you recommend 128GB over 64GB?

Question 2: I’m assuming it’s somewhere in the forum.... but if someone has time and wants to help I’m wondering if ML would also allow us to use our 7D cameras and get a clean HDMI feed? And if so, what can be expected and for how long it might work? My spouse would like to setup a home studio to add a live classes to her online course business and wondering if we should get new cameras or if we can manage with what we already have. I came across a few posts that makes me believe it works but wondering if it’s a good solution for our need. Anyone has experience with this? We would need to also purchase an HDMI capture card and after this post I’m going to have a look at the new Elgato products.

Question 3: What firmware version would you recommend for A) Quality recording of dialogues/interviews B) Quality recording for city/wildlife C) Webcam use with HDMI feed. I’m assuming different firmwares might be needed?

In the mean time I’ll keep reading the forums and watching YouTube examples.... I was just about to see if I could sell the 7Ds but perhaps there is still life in them... haven’t filmed videos since 2014 but just upgraded my PC and reactivated my Adobe Creative Cloud... so much catching up to do.

Thanks for your time

[IDA_ML]

@Biojack,

My advice to you is to keep your 7D-s no matter what.  This camera produces the most beautiful and highest quality continuous 1728x972 resolution RAW video with sound that I have ever seen - deep natural colors, very high dynamic range, excellent fine detail, amazing post processing headroom with both - MLVApp and DaVinci Resolve.  Its crop mode also works fine if you are willing to accept a significant crop factor.  The card write speed is about 80 MB/s.  Please read this entire thread very carefully and make notes of posts that you find important.  Then download the latest build called:

magiclantern-raw_video_10bit_12bit_LVState.2019May15.7D203.zip

from here:

https://bitbucket.org/daniel_fort/magic-lantern/downloads/

and start experimenting.  Dfort did a great job with this build! If you don't need 4k you will very soon find out that this is your camera, especially for studio work.  I kept mine and have never regreted.

Good luck!

[Walter Schulz]

Our 7D fanboy answered first.

7D is hampered in several ways: Mostly because of dual processor design (and devs haven't found out how to control the second unit) there are some features not available:
No HDR and Dual-ISO in video mode, for example. See https://builds.magiclantern.fm/features.html Don't be mislead by Dual-ISO info there. It doesn't tell Dual-ISO in photo and video mode.
And because of old age (Digic 4) there are additional limitations: Considering todays standards HDMI options are outdated. You get 1080i in 8 bit YCbCr 4:2:2 But that doesn't mean you get a view in 1920x1080. Nope, on my 1920x1200 monitor I get black borders left and right because it is actually 4:3 ratio (remember old times with 1024x768 screens? Same ratio.)
My SL3/250D/Kiss X/200D Mark II does true 1080 via HDMI. And 4k. And 10 bit. Canon learned a lesson or two between Digic 4 and 8.
And no 7D experimental build with 4k options. See experimental build page.

You haven't mentioned what (in numbers) "Quality recording" means for you = Resolution, frame rate, bit depth. And if you want to use crop mode or not, if you want to invest in a VAF for uncropped mode, ...
And if you have an external mic ... I hope you do, because an internal mic is not that great and that is not because it is mono only ... and in case of HDMI usage the only way to get sound online is an external mic connected to PC because 7D will do audio via HDMI for playback only. Not during recording!
dfort's build does not include latest lua_fixes which means there is a 30 minute limit on HDMI. Don't know if Elgato's workaround works with 7D. Don't even know if 7D is in their compatibility list. Look it up first.

Cards: Sandisk 120 MByte/s has a maximum write rate of about 70 MByte/s. Source: https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/reviews/cf-cards/sandisk-extreme-32gb-cf-card/
7D can do better. If you need it depends on your needs, obviously. See https://rawcalculator.netlify.app/calculator_desktop
Same applies to capacity. 64 GB at 7D's maximum data rate will give you around 13 minutes raw recording (give or take).

The 7D is a workhorse. Build quality (apart water resistance) is top, battery life is quite good (still recommend an external power supply for streaming) and CF-card interface is pretty fast (80+ MByte/s).

But it is not a great cam for web streaming! Not at all.
Just connect your 7D to your monitor/AVR via HDMI and test for yourself.

[ilia3101]

Please read this entire thread very carefully and make notes of posts that you find important.

Don't read the entire thread ever! (if it's this old) You will fill your head with a lot of outdated facts.

[IDA_ML]

64 GB at 7D's maximum data rate will give you around 13 minutes raw recording (give take).

According to the calculator that you linked, you get 15 minutes raw recording at 14 bits and 22 minutes at 10 bits on a 64 GB card.  Quality loss at 10 bits vs. 14 bits is negligible and very hard to percept even by experienced pixel peepers.

[Biojack]

Thanks everyone! I'm amazed by how fast those answer came considering how old the camera is.  I guess I'll need to have a better look and decide if it's worth keeping the two 7Ds. From what I get here I'm thinking a more modern tool might be better for our current project. That said I'd love to experiment a bit, though now that I think of it the price of a new memory card is perhaps more than I'm willing to spend.

I loved using the 7Ds for wildlife photography. Even though it was a heavy toy I it up many mountains and on many multi day hikes in the Pacific NW. I even took one and 5 lenses around Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, New Zealand and Australia on a 6 months trip in 2012. Bullet proof cameras! I probably should have sold at least one of them in 2012... 

[Wlad81]

Is this camera is capable now of recording 1920x1080 12 bit 25fps video?

Can it write 80 MB/s or 90 MB/s on 1066x CF?

[Walter Schulz]

https://rawcalculator.netlify.app/calculator_desktop

[Wlad81]

So the data on this page is incorrect?

https://kameratrollet.se/canon-write-speeds/

[Walter Schulz]

My own measurements with Komputerbay 1066x 128 GB:
write 85 - 91.x MB/s (in photo mode)
In video mode around 55 MByte/s.

These are benchmark numbers and real data rates may be not well matched.

[yourboylloyd]

So the data on this page is incorrect?

https://kameratrollet.se/canon-write-speeds/

Use the calculator that Walter sent you. It will answer all of your questions

[Wlad81]

So, I suppose, this camera is better than 50D?

[Walter Schulz]

So, I suppose, this camera is better than 50D?

It has a higher data rate, that's all.

[Wlad81]

Higher data rate = higher resolution (continuous).

My own measurements with Komputerbay 1066x 128 GB:
write 85 - 91.x MB/s (in photo mode)
In video mode around 55 MByte/s.

Why so?

[Walter Schulz]

Nothing to write home about.
10 percent higher data rate translates to next to nothing higher vertical/horizontal resolution.

To get double resolution you need quad times data rates.

[Walter Schulz]

Why so?

Photo mode benchmark rates = Numbers close to theoretical date rates, overhead by computing mostly ignored
Video mode benchmarks rates = Numbers close to numbers in real life, overhead by computing taken into account.

[Wlad81]

Are you talking about h.264 or raw video?

[Walter Schulz]

Are you trying to troll?
7D's typical data rate in H.264 in 1080/IPB is about 5.5 MByte/s.

[Wlad81]

OK, I see. Thank you so much.