First 7D alpha released!

[a1ex]

How much hotter? Again, see http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=1573.0 and previous posts.

2, 3: see previous posts.

[ilguercio]

Well I def didn't smell anything burning but yeh it does run way hotter. I'm not concerned as its been explained that it uses more power. No biggie. I noticed a few more things.

1.Audio meters don't work in liveview mode most times. If it happens to work its not as sensitive as when during record mode.

2. When I monitor with my Zacuto evf i get this note "magic zoom does not work in dmi 1080i". Would be cool to use magic zoom  on my EVF which displays in that mode.

3. When ML menu is brought up (trash button) the picture profile menu comes up for a quick moment.

4.Focal Range Notifier is very sluggish in Liveview and record mode. However if u go to trap focus menu and change the focal length of your lens its almost real time in updating. Wish that were also the case for record and liveview.

Definitely having fun with it and I'm greatly appreciative for all the hard work. Cheers.

Get an infrared thermometer and do the measurements.

[beej]

3. When ML menu is brought up (trash button) the picture profile menu comes up for a quick moment.

Yeah, I get this also.

[g3gg0]

when ML menu is opening, it is first opening some canon menu (usually you get "my menu") before ML menu will appear.
this is because of the canon menu will disable all other paint events - and ML menu doesnt have to care about being overwritten
by all the canon stuff like metering bar and battery.

so this is intended behavior.

[feureau]

After loading ML, I sometimes get a notice that says: Magic Off and the firmware would say -ml-off. and ML couldn't run. I'm not sure what's causing this though.

Thoughts?

[feureau]

Probably the battery is old, what does it display at "recharge performance" in Canon menu?

Full three green bars. It's only a 2 months old battery. I probably need to reset the battery.

[a1ex]

Probably you are holding SET for a bit longer? (that's the shortcut key for disabling ML)

[jmalmsten]

Installed, yesterday, here in sweden on a 7D bought from Japan and using the american Firmware provided here. So far, these are my notes:

• - loading from card is a bit awkward, but expected until later releases. Better that, than having my camera bricked because of prematurely editing the flashed software
  
   - Speaking as a new ML user... the control-scheme in the menu-system is however VERY confusing. Loading menu from the trash-can is understandable, I guess you needed a button that normally does very  little else during live-view. But then in the menu, I sometimes pres Set to change settings, sometimes I have to press Q-menu. And there's no indication other than I have to try the buttons. And the normal menu somehow engages some kind of "hide items" mode. But first dozens of times I pressed it I thought it was a bug. Because the screen would suddenly get a weird pattern over itself and then menu-items would dissapear. I know I'm a newcomer and this feature is probably well thought out... but... I think you would gain a ton of points in usability if the control-scheme in the menus were at least consistent. Or if it was possible to just disable the hide-menu mode completely
  
   - An alpha release is there to just release a working copy to see the problems people find. If it had all the main features, it would be a beta release. Right now they're just letting us test to see if all of our combinations of hardware and shooting-habits are working properly. So complaining that it's "premature" is missing the point, to say the least.
  
   - Bug: Once, when I was playing around today with playback the crop-marks went funky when returning to live-view. It was off-set vertically by a small amount of pixels and left the remaining area transparent. I where using a custom crop-mark made by myself and after pulling up the ML-menu and then closing back to LiveView it went back to normal. I haven't been able to recreate the bug since then.
  
   - ML loads fine with the third party chipped battery bought from LAcolor. And my Canon original too of course. Won't load when batttery is down on red. But that's expected
  I think the camera runs a little warmer. But I'm not ruling out me not noticing before and I haven't been using it as constantly as I have now with ML loaded.
  
   - I am a bit confused. For me, the audio meter is running just fine both in LV and recording...
  
   - first times I launched ML, I had a ton of crop-marks in the folder. I couldn't see all of them but it loaded fine otherwise. Then suddenly it started to complain about it being more than 9 cropmarks and failed to load. I got rid of the unneeded cropmarks and there's no problems with that now. Just odd that it didn't complain at first

Other than those, I am extremely pleased with this thingamajigg. If this was only custom-crop-marks and LV-contrast&Saturation adjustments... I would be so happy. I've been waiting for those two ever since the camera came out! And later, when it's released for real... with the bootloader properly coded... I'll be so much more happy still.

And there's also a couple of features present that confuses me a bit, but I'll be reading the documentation on those and won't bother people here with it.

Again. Usability could need some work, but I love the early results.

[edited post for readability   ]

[beej]

I guess using ML at first is a little complicated because it does a lot, there are a lot of options, and you are having to change or reuse buttons and screens that you've learnt how to use in one way in a different way.

I found it a little complex at first, but after a bit of focused playing today, checking out the features, behaviour and options, and figuring out the implementation and the button presses etc, it's actually becoming quite straightforward to use.

I expect a lot of us here are new to ML, so expect a bit of a learning curve. I think it's wise to not clutter this thread with general new user questions about how to use ML and feature requests etc, so it can stay focused on getting it up to a stable release version for the 7D.

I guess there are other places in the forums to talk about general ML use etc.

However - I'm loving it so far.

[dubzeebass]

Congrats!  Donated.

[a1ex]

Or if it was possible to just disable the hide-menu mode completely

This can be disabled by simply not pressing the MENU button while in ML menu

[maxcolefilms]

Awesome!! Downloaded and Donated today, way to go Magic Lantern team!

[Pelican]

The connector difference is obvious, but only two wire go to the adapter. Either there's a chip, or the connector is the key (but then I'm sure the noname brand would have figured it out).

Thank you for sharing.
I've just checked my camera and haven't seen any connector for the extra pin of the Canon dummy battery. Interesting.

[Pelican]

when ML menu is opening, it is first opening some canon menu (usually you get "my menu") before ML menu will appear.
this is because of the canon menu will disable all other paint events - and ML menu doesnt have to care about being overwritten
by all the canon stuff like metering bar and battery.

so this is intended behavior.

And this is the reason for the bug I reported earlier with the Date/Time/Zone menu item (It appears on the top of the ML menu in every minute.) Maybe it would be better if ML opens the info screen before it starts.

[a1ex]

You can adjust GUIMODE_ML_MENU (print CURRENT_DIALOG_MAYBE to see what values it accepts) and find a suitable dialog. Make sure the scrollwheels still work.

[inky38]

Noticed a couple of things on the Focus menu

  1)   Trap focus does not have the continuous option  (Should this be available yet ?)

  2)  "Your Lens did not report focal distance" is always displayed.   I have tested this with 2 lenses so far   15-85  and 70-200 II

[beej]

Unless I'm understanding something wrong, the frame rate display in the upper right corner seems to be incorrect.

In PAL, 25fps mode, the frame rate is displayed as "30.000", and in NTSC 30fps it reads 35.xxx.
PAL 720p 50fpx is displayed as 60.000.

These are not the numbers I'd expect...

[a1ex]

#define TG_FREQ_BASE 24000000 will fix it

[be21]

Hi

This is my first time installing magic lantern.
I formated the card as you said and I also fully charged the battery
The firmare at the moment is 2.0.3
When i go to copy the ML.zips contents to the root cf folder it says that i do not have permission to copy this and the whole thing just cancels

Can someone help me?

[feureau]

When i go to copy the ML.zips contents to the root cf folder it says that i do not have permission to copy this and

Try unzipping the .zip first.

[ted ramasola]

Hi

This is my first time installing magic lantern.
I formated the card as you said and I also fully charged the battery
The firmare at the moment is 2.0.3
When i go to copy the ML.zips contents to the root cf folder it says that i do not have permission to copy this and the whole thing just cancels

Can someone help me?

Use a card reader to transfer the ML files to the card.

[feureau]

Has anyone tried creating custom cropmarks for ML?

I created some custom cropmarks and if I load them on ML, it would freeze the camera. It would lock up, and the shutter will fire, but the camera tries to write for, like, forever. (the red LED flashes on). Turning it off/on again doesn't work, had to remove and reinsert battery.

I'm not sure if it's ML or my cropmarks. I created them by opening an existing cropmark in photoshop, edited, and save-overwrite them to ensure the same encoding, etc.

I can't seem to find the attachment option (if it's enabled at all?) so I uploaded them on mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/?2b8zs7eilb2exp9

I've also made sure that there's only 8 cropmarks on the card. I dunno if that matters or not, but still..

[collbeanzfilms]

Tried it out all day and shot a little piece i'm calling '3' (wont take you long to work out why i'd guess!) Anyway, basically, apart from a few minor glitches, everything i tried worked well 99% of the time. The glitches were minor things that didnt effect the outcome of actual filming, like the crop display going a bit funky at top and bottom a few times... But it DID NOT stop me from producing...
Here's the little fun piece anyway
https://vimeo.com/51364896

Chow! and massive respect to the ML team!

[g3gg0]

#define TG_FREQ_BASE 24000000 will fix it

true. updated it in the timer table but not in source.
thanks for pointing out.

[RM22]

If you have the genuine Canon AC adaptor please test it.
(Mine is a cheap one (~12 bucks) and it has no chip. I wonder if the most expensive Canon has the chip or not.)

Yup, I have one of those cheap adaptors too. I tested it in the grip+a chipped battery and it didn't work. My cheap adapter has the same connectors as the genuine adapter but it must have a similar chip as the batteries.

There is a workaround if you have a battery grip.

1. Insert chipped battery in the right side compartment and leave the battery compartment open.
2. Turn on camera and flash ML.
3. With camera still on, insert AC adapter in left compartment.
4. (optional) remove chipped battery.
5. Close grip battery compartment.

Once that's done, mine shows both batteries as having bad battery life and only a percentage of battery power, but the top LCD on the 7D shows full battery power.

Try at your own risk. I haven't done any extensive tests. I just know that it works that way.