Installing Magic Lantern: A Basic Step-by-Step Video Walkthrough
Given the recent leaps Magic Lantern has been making regarding mind-blowing RAW video capabilities for both old and new Canon cameras, there are probably a lot of Canon owners out there who are thinking of giving the custom firmware a try for the first time.
However, before you go installing one of the nightly builds (the unstable ones that can actually do RAW video), we would suggest installing the current stable build and getting to know the ins and outs of Magic Lantern first. With that in mind, here’s a quick tutorial put together by Dave Dugdale from Learning DSLR Video that walks you through the steps of installing Magic Lantern for the first time.
The actual process isn’t that difficult, and ML provides a read-me that does the same thing. But for those of us who are visual in nature (and, lets face it, photographers tend to be pretty visual) a video walkthrough is never a bad idea.
The basic steps are as follows: first, make sure your camera is fully charged. If the battery runs out while you’re updating firmware, you’ll have a brick on your hands. Next, restore the camera to factory settings, and then insert and format a 32GB or smaller memory card.
Then you want to insert the card into your computer and copy over the contents of the download file you got from the ML website. The card then goes back into your camera, after which you will navigate to and click on the Firmware Update option. Assuming everything goes according to plan, you should end up with the screen you see in the picture above.
Accessing the Magic Lantern menu after that will be as easy as hitting the trash can button. You now have quite a few neat capabilities at your fingertips that you didn’t have before, and soon, those may even include stable RAW video.
(via ISO 1200)
P.S. As with any custom firmware install, there is a risk that you will brick your camera even if it is a stable build and you follow the instructions to a tee. It’s unlikely, but possible. Consider this fair warning.
