Great news Canon lovers. That new 5D Mark IV you just bought won't be limited to the manufacturer firmware for too much longer. It seems the talented hackers at Magic Lantern have already managed to break into the new camera.
Nikon's D5100, D3100 and D7000 all come with their own video time limits that keep them well below the 30 minute mark necessary to keep from being classified as "video cameras." That's because, as we've mentioned in the past, video cameras are charged a 5.6 percent duty that the manufacturers would like to avoid.
The D5100, for example, will stop you from recording once you've hit 20 minutes or 4GB, whichever comes first. In all honesty, most videographers won't see a need to record videos any longer than this, but if you do, the Nikon Hackers have released a hack that removes this time limit from the D5100, D3100 and D7000.
4K video recording may soon be available to Canon T2i/550D users willing to load a firmware hack onto their cameras. Apparently a guy known as Earz62801 on YouTube will be releasing a firmware hack on 1/1/11 that will give the T2i/550D 4K, 3K, and 2K recording capabilities and bit rates between 45MB/s and 175MB/s. He claims that 91 seconds of footage can be recorded at 2K and 175MB/s, though the time drops down to 6 seconds for 4K.