Magic Lantern teaser3; RAW silent video sequence from Canon 50D

ziggy53ziggy53 Super Moderators Posts: 24,127 moderator
edited May 28, 2013 in Video
The Magic Lantern team of programmers have achieved what many thought to be impossible: High-quality RAW video sequence from the Canon 50D, still image dSLR.

While the Canon 50D was never released with any sort of video capabilities, it had the basic electronics and firmware in place. Indeed, the basic qualities of Live View sensor (and support electronics), Digic IV image processor and UDMA storage pipeline were finally exploited in the 5D MKII, which was the first Canon dSLR to include full video (with audio) capture capabilities.

Now Magic Lantern is experimenting with the same RAW video sequence capability that it uncovered for the 5D MKIII, 5D MKII and (most recently) 60D video-capable dSLRs, and demonstrating that capability for the 50D too.

What this means is that an old $500(ish) 50D and very fast UDMA-capable storage card can record a short video sequence of image frames with very high-quality, and rivaling the video image quality of RED video cameras costing thousands more.

While current capabilities are not quite full-HD, max specifications are 1592×720p24 with continuous recording, the results at ISO H2 (ISO 12,800 equivalence) speak pretty well for themselves:

http://vimeo.com/66995002

There is also a comparison between a 50D and a 5D MKII:

http://vimeo.com/67084920

Here's an anamorphic example from the same author, Julian Huijbregts.
(Recorded at 1280x960p24 with a Kowa B&H 2x anamorphic lens and then stretched in post to 2560x960p.)

http://vimeo.com/67023056

Note that the author makes original downloads available for each of these examples. :thumb:thumb:clap
ziggy53
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
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