Hi!
I'm new to ML but since I just activated it in my 450D, I figured I'd explain in some more detail how it's done and what's actually achieved with ML on the 450D.
Installing:
- Check your firmware in the camera. It should be 1.1.0. If not, you need to find this firmware and upgrade the camera to it. There are links to the firmware on this site.
- Format your SD card in the camera and select "Low level format". This is done in the camera's original menus. All files on the SD will be lost.
- Remove the SD card from the camera and insert it into a card reader in your computer.
- Find the most recent ML package for the 450D. As of now, it's this one: ML test build for 450D firmware 1.1.0. :
https://bitbucket.org/Ant123/magic-lantern-40d/downloads/magiclantern-Nightly.2016Oct26.450D110.zip- Unpack the contents of the ZIP file you just downloaded to the root of the SD card (keeping the directory structure intact of course).
- Also download this small firmware file:
https://bitbucket.org/Ant123/magic-lantern-40d/downloads/ML450D110.fir- Copy the .fir file to the SD card. It should be copied to the root directory of the card.
- Unmount/eject the SD card in your PC operating system properly before removing it so you don't lose any information on it.
- Insert the SD card into the camera and power the camera on
- To make the SD card bootable, you perform a firmware upgrade in the camera menus. The trick here is that the .fir file you put on the SD is not actually a firmware for the camera but rather just a program that makes the SD card bootable.
- During the "firmware upgrade" process, the camera will (very soon) light up the blue LED by the WB button on the back of the camera. This is the verification that the card was made bootable.
- You now need to remove the battery in order to restart the camera. Just off/on will not work. Don't panic - even if this is NOT how you abort a normal firmware upgrade, this is what you need to do in this case.
- If you decide to make your SD card not bootable anymore, just perform a "firmware upgrade" again. This time, the blue LED will blink slowly. This indicates that the SD card was reverted to its original non bootable state. Again, removing the battery afterwards is the only way.
Now, fire up the ol´cam and hit the trashcan button on the back of the camera. Now, you should see the ML menus.
You can remove the .fir file if you like as that's not part of ML. I keep it on my SD so I can revert the bootable state of the SD if I like.
If you´d like to have multiple SD cards with ML, just copy all files to that SD and insert it into the camera. Then perform the "firmware upgrade" with the .fir file on the SD card and restart the camera. Every SD that you want to run ML on needs to be bootable. You can have one ML activated SD for the camera and other SDs that are not. Whenever you start the camera with the ML activated SD, you will have ML menus, otherwise not.
This is what the SD cards looks like for me:
E:\>dir
Volume in drive E is EOS_DIGITAL
2020-03-31 23:05 <DIR> DCIM
2020-03-31 23:05 <DIR> MISC
2016-10-26 22:57 260 704 autoexec.bin
2016-10-26 22:58 <DIR> ML
2020-03-31 22:29 1 247 ML450D110.fir
So, you have ML in your 450D, what can you do with it? Not much at this time (and likely not anywhere in the near or even far future). ML is designed for other platforms than the 450D and seems difficult to port to the likes of the 450D. At this time, only the intervalometer function is supposed to work. It gives you the possibility tell the camera that instead of taking one picture, it should take a number of pictures (configurable) by either pushing the trigger button half way of fully, or just wait a few seconds after leaving the menu and then start taking pics. The interval between the pics is also configurable. That's it as far as I can see. If you need this function, ML is great. If not, why bother on a 450D?
I hope this helps someone that likes to try ML on the 450D.
/Fredrik
