Magic lantern for t3i?

[bobandcar]

Anyone know what magic lantern deos for the t3i as far as pictures go? Not interested in video. Any horror stories

 

[pgriz]

No horror stories - just good things. I use it on my T1i, and it has provided me with a number of features that the native Canon firmware doesn't. The ones I use routinely is the spotmeter (customized readout); customizable-under/over exposure indicator; the intervalometer; various info displays; fine controls on ISO, shutter speed, white balance; many options for customizing Live-View, etc. For instance, I have my ML spotmeter set up to read the spot and give me a reading in the 0-255 range. Anything in the 240+ range is essentially going to be blown out, anything in the 0-10 range will be blocked. This allows me to adjust the exposure so that the highlight is at the 240 range - and I then know that in the output image, the highlight will be with detail. The histogram doesn't help as much if you have areas of the image that you don't care about keeping the detail in - those will show up on the right side, but won't give you an indication if your chosen highlight is at the 255 level or not. Recently, I used the intervalometer to set up a series of shots at night that I wanted to use to make star-trail images - no additional hardware was needed. I also used the customizable LV features to allow me to see what I was shooting under very dim conditions where flash was going to provide the actual light for the subject. So my take-away is that you'll have a lot more options available to you to learn, and once learned, will help your photography.

 

[bobandcar]

How deos the HDR feature work?

 

[pgriz]

How deos the HDR feature work?

If you're thinking in-camera HDR, then ML doesn't have it for my camera (T1i), but what it does have is the ability to shoot a bracketed series that goes outside the +2/-2 stops that the camera firmware allows you. For instance, you specify how many frames you want in your HDR sequence, what difference in exposure (fraction of, or # of stops between frames), the sequence you want it in, whether you use ISO shifting or not (allows you to do HDR varying the ISO only), and and the post-processing scripts to associate with the sequence for aligning and merging.

 

[bobandcar]

Interesting. If I install it is there any going back?

 

[pgriz]

Interesting. If I install it is there any going back?

Yep. as easy as changing your SD memory card. Because you're not actually "installing" it in the camera, or modifying the Canon firmware. The process is that you make the SD card bootable, with some ML code residing in the root directory of the SD card. Then at bootup, the camera first loads its firmware into working memory, then adds the modules from the SD card. If you format your card, you will wipe out the data on the card, including the software you copied into the root directory, and your card becomes "new" again. However, ML has a format option where it re-installs itself after the formatting is done - so you can reformat the card, and still have ML accessible to you. If you replace the SD card by a normal SD card, then the camera will behave exactly as it will without any ML firmware. When I was testing ML, I had the ML code only on one card, "just in case". After a number of months, I've made all my SD cards bootable, copied the ML firmware onto them, and can change cards without losing the ML functions.

 

[bobandcar]

So when I put my sd into my laptop I can transfer my files off of it like normal, correct?

 

[pgriz]

So when I put my sd into my laptop I can transfer my files off of it like normal, correct?

Exactly.

 

[bobandcar]

I will be testing this out over the next couple weeks. Any other input for me?

 

[jsecordphoto]

Just go for it. I downloaded it on my computer and then just kept putting off installing it on one of my cards for like 2 months. Wish I had done it sooner, the bulb timer and intervelometer are worth installing it alone. I do a lot of long exposure stuff at night and it's so nice not having to use a remote and I can just set how long I want the exposure to be. I haven't even really experimented with all the features but I'm really glad I finally started using it. I'm using it on a 60D but yeah same thing really

 

[pgriz]

There are a lot of features. Pick one at a time, explore it by changing the various options and see what each one does. There is help documentation, but it is not very deep in the sense that it's more guidance than specific instruction. Because there are a LOT of options, and some interact with other options, it pays to go slow. I've explored maybe half of the options in about two years of use - those that were of interest to me. The others are for the future.