Magic Lantern 0.2 for Canon 550D, firmware 1.0.

9
User’s Guide
http://magiclantern.wikia.com/550D

March 31, 2011

Magic Lantern is an open (GPL) framework for developing enhancements to the

amazing Canon 5D Mark II and 550D/T2i digital SLRs. Magic Lantern is being de-
veloped by a small team, helped by a very enthusiastic and respectful user commu-
nity.
Initial version by Trammell Hudson (the author and lead of Magic Lantern project)

Main developer for 550D branch: Alex

Crypto tools and 550D/1.0.9 port by Arm.Indy

Code review and insights by AJ

Patches by piersg, nandoide, stefano, trho, deti, tapani, phil

Card tools by Pel, Zeno, lichtjaar

Cropmarks by CameraRick, Robert, bwwd, turbinicarpus

Tutorials by sawomedia, Renny, Jeremy, Daniel, Dod3032, MediaUnlocked,

3615geek, CineDigital.tv, jeveuxdoncjevilme

Thanks to all the users who provided feedback and reported bugs!
Special thanks for people who donated in order to help the development of Magic
Lantern; your help is very much appreciated!
Also, thanks to the CHDK team and all the contributors and donors for the 5D2
Magic Lantern!

Magic Lantern is being developed by independent film makers in our spare time
and at risk to our beloved cameras. We hope that it saves you time and aggravation
on set, and we’d appreciate your support. You can help by donating via PayPal, or
through equipment donations. You can also contact me (Alex) via email. Thanks!

1
Features
• Audio: disable AGC and digital filters, audio meters, manual audio controls, selectable
input source (internal, internal+external, external stereo, balanced), audio monitoring
via USB.
• Exposure helpers: zebras, false color, histogram, waveform, spotmeter.
• Focus tools: focus peaking, zoom while recording, trap focus, rack focus, follow focus,
focus stacking, focus graph, zoom in Face Detect mode.

• Movie helpers: Bitrate control (QScale or CBR), custom AF algorithm, movie logging
(Exif-like metadata), auto-restart after buffer overflow or 4 GB limit, time remaining dis-
play, clean LiveView display without any overlays, change movie position on the mode
dial.

• Cropmark images: user-editable overlays to assist framing and composition.

• Fine control for ISO, Shutter, Kelvin white balance and other image settings.
• Remote release with LCD face sensor and audio trigger, without extra hardware.
• Bracketing: exposure bracketing, focus stacking.

• Timelapse: intervalometer (for photos and movies), silent pictures without shutter actu-
ation; integration with bracketing.
• Astro- and night photography: bulb timer for very long exposures (up to 8h).
• Info displays: focus and DOF info, CMOS temperature, shutter count, clock.

• For strobists: flash exposure compensation from -10 to +3 EV; auto-toggle flash / no flash
(even pics without flash, odd pics with flash).
• Power management: Turn off display in LiveView mode; quickly adjust LCD backlight
level.

• Fun stuff: slit-scan pictures.

Important notes
• If you have a bootable SD card and have the DISKBOOT flag set in the camera (which the
installer does), and you do not have an AUTOEXEC.BIN file on the card the camera WILL
NOT BOOT! It will hang and not wake up until the battery is removed.
• If you encounter a “locked up” camera, quickly remove the battery. Otherwise the ARM
might be in a tight-loop and get very hot, very quickly. Your battery will run down and
your LCD might show some discoloration.
• When in doubt, remove the battery and reboot.
• And, remember that this software can damage or destroy your camera.

2
Contents
Features 2

Important notes 2

FAQ 6
How do I erase all the images without removing ML? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
How do I see shutter counter / CMOS temperature? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
How do I get exposure times longer than 30 seconds? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
How do I adjust ISO in smaller steps? And Kelvin white balance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Why can’t I set the ISO under 200? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Do I have to adjust ISO/shutter/aperture/WB from ML menu only? . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Does ML eat batteries faster, or cause overheating? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
How do I record more than 12 minutes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Can I record more than 30 minutes / 4 GB continuously? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Why the audio is so quiet after disabling AGC? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Why does the camera take pictures when pressing the shutter half-way? . . . . . . . . . 7
Can the intervalometer be more accurate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
My camera freezes and I have to remove the battery, or saves corrupted files. Why? . 7
Why feature X doesn’t work properly? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Known issues 7

Keyboard shortcuts 8

Menu options 9
Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Audio Meters: ON / OFF / MovieOnly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Analog Gain (dB) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
L-DigitalGain and R-DigitalGain (dB) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
AGC: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Wind Cut Mode: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Monitoring-USB: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Output volume (dB) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
LiveV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Global Draw: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Histo/Wavefm: ON/Luma/RGB for histogram, OFF/Small/Large for waveform 12
Zebras: ON/OFF/NRec, lo_level..hi_level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
False color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3
 Cropmks(x/n) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Spotmeter: OFF / Percent / IRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
ClrScreen: OFF / HalfShutter / WhenIdle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Focus Peak: OFF/HDIF/MORF, threshold, color_mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Magic Zoom: OFF/Zr/ZF/ALW, Small/Med/Large, AFF/NW,NE/SE/SW . . . 14
LiveView Zoom: x5 / x10 / :-) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Bit Rate: FW default / CBRe / QScale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Movie Restart: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Movie logging: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Movie AF: OFF/Hold/Cont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Start with LV: ON / Movie mode / All modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
MovieModeRemap: A-DEP / CA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
DOF adjust: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Movie REC key: Default / HalfShutter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Time Indicator: OFF / Elapsed / Remain.Card / Remain.4GB . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Shoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
HDR Brack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Take a pic every X seconds / Record Y seconds, pause X seconds . . . . . . . . . . 20
Intervalometer: ON/OFF, Wait/NoWait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
LCD Remote Shot: OFF/Near/Away/Wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Audio RemoteShot: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Trap Focus: OFF/Hold/Cont. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Motion Detect: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Flash / No flash: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Silent Picture / Silent Pic HiRes / Silent Pic LongX / Slit-scan Pic . . . . . . . . . . 22
Bulb Timer: 1s...8h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Mirror Lockup: OFF / ON / Timer+Remote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Expo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
ISO: 100-25600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
WhiteBalance: 1700...10000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
WBShift G/M: Green 0..9 / Magenta 0..9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Shutter: 1/30...1/4000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Aperture: f/1.2...f/45.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Light Adjust: OFF/ALO strong/HTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
PictureStyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Contrast/Saturation: -4..4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Flash AEcomp: -10..3 EV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

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 Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Focus dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Focus A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Rack Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Focus speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Follow Focus: OFF / Manual / AutoLock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Run Stack focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Focal Dist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Hyperfocal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
DOF Near . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
DOF Far . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
How rack focus works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Debug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
ForceDisplayOFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
SensorShortcuts: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
AF frame: Default / AutoHide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Auto Burst PicQ: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Draw palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Screenshot (10 s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Debug logging: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Spy prop/evt/mem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Config . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Config AutoSave: ON/OFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Save config now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Delete config file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
DISP presets: 1..4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Extra info displays 31

Main shooting screen (outside LiveView) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
MENU DISP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
LiveView . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Power saving 32

Hidden settings 33

5
FAQ

How do I erase all the images without removing ML?

Canon menu (Play) Erase images All images on card.
Notes:

• This will not remove files created by ML (like *.LOG, *.422, *.SH). You will have to delete
these files from PC.
• Formatting the card will remove ML from that card. If you did this, you will have to
make the card bootable again and then copy ML files.

How do I see shutter counter / CMOS temperature?

MENU DISP.

How do I get exposure times longer than 30 seconds?

Use Bulb timer together with LCD remote shot, audio trigger or intervalometer.

How do I adjust ISO in smaller steps? And Kelvin white balance?

These settings are in the Expo menu.

Why can’t I set the ISO under 200?

Turn off HTP and read the camera manual.

Do I have to adjust ISO/shutter/aperture/WB from ML menu only?

No, you can adjust them both from ML menu or Canon user interface.
Note: when you use Kelvin WB, the WB icon from Canon menu will not be displayed, but it
works (you can change it).

Does ML eat batteries faster, or cause overheating?

Yes and no, depending on what features you have enabled. For example, focus peaking, false
colors, waveform, zebras (and maybe others) are CPU hungry. It can even reduce power con-
sumption by turning off the LCD screen, or by letting you change the backlight level quickly.
See Power saving for details.

How do I record more than 12 minutes?

There’s no 12 minute limit. There’s a 30 minute limit and a 4 GB limit, whichever comes first.
You can either lower the bitrate or use Movie restart.

6
Can I record more than 30 minutes / 4 GB continuously?
You can use Movie Restart, but you will lose a few seconds when a new file is created.

Why the audio is so quiet after disabling AGC?

You have to adjust the volume manually, the camera won’t do it for you any more :)

Why does the camera take pictures when pressing the shutter half-way?
Trap focus may be active.

Can the intervalometer be more accurate?

Select the NoWait mode and it will be as accurate as the camera’s realtime clock.

My camera freezes and I have to remove the battery, or saves corrupted files.
Why?
You may have an unstable build of ML. Upgrade to the latest one; if you still have problems,
report an issue.

Why feature X doesn’t work properly?

• Read the manual. In many cases you will find the solution.
• Try upgrading to the latest build. In some cases, downgrading to an earlier build will
also help.
• Search the Vimeo ML user group, the issue tracker and the mailing list.
• If you still have problems, report an issue (if you’ve found a bug) or ask on the forums.

Known issues
• First second of recorded audio may be very loud
• Certain actions may clear the 16:9 bars in Movie mode. A workaround is to use a crop-
mark which has those bars.
• Stack focus only works in Live View, after going through Play mode first. Sometimes,
rack & stack focus simply refuse to work, and you need to restart your camera.
• After closing ML menu, screen may not redraw automatically (half-press the shutter or
press MENU to trigger a redraw)

• Sometimes the menu gets overwritten by Canon’s drawing routines, or flickers.

• Camera may become unstable if you change modes while ML menu is active.

7
 • External monitors are not yet fully supported (some functions may not work / display
correctly). It is recommended to use a cropmark image.
The following functions are known not to work with external displays:
– Histogram
– Waveform
– False color
– Spotmeter
– Auto ISO / Shutter / Kelvin
– ML displays may be shifted (menu not centered)

Keyboard shortcuts
These buttons have special meaning with Magic Lantern:

• Half-shutter press in virtually any Canon dialog window/box will activate the current
selection. This helps you change settings faster in photo mode. It works by emulating a
SET button press when GUI_STATE property is equal to PLAYMENU, which includes dialogs
like WB, AF, pic style, pic quality, Canon menu and submenus and others. To restore
default firmware behavior (i.e. cancel the current selection on half-shutter press), disable
set.on.halfshutter.
• Zoom In button works right after you take a picture, which is done by going to PLAY
mode instead of Quick Review. For this to work, set Image review: Hold in Canon
menu. To restore default behavior, disable quick.review.allow.zoom.
• Zoom In and Zoom Out are faster in Play mode (while zooming on an image), compared
to standard firmware.
• Zoom In while recording: it does just that :) (Magic Zoom)

• DISP in LiveView has 3 extra display modes specific to ML, which are fully customizable
from LiveV menu. Each display mode has its own set of LiveV settings.

• LCD sensor (not really a button, but can be used as one): see LCD Remote Shot and
SensorShortcuts.

• LCD sensor + UP / DOWN: adjust LCD backlight level.

• LCD sensor + LEFT / RIGHT in LiveView: adjust Kelvin white balance.

• LCD sensor + Arrows: see Follow Focus.
• LCD sensor + aperture change in LiveView: DOF adjust (changes aperture and ISO while
keeping the same exposure).

• LCD sensor + Zoom In: activates Magic Zoom.

• Flash / DOF preview: see False color.

8
 • Flash + UP / DOWN in Movie mode: adjust audio gain (volume for recording).
• Flash + LEFT / RIGHT in Movie mode: adjust ISO.
• Half-shutter / *: see ClrScreen, Trap Focus, Silent Picture, Movie AF, Rack focus, Bulb
timer, Movie REC key.

• Q followed by SET, while ISO speed dialog is active: go to ISO item in ML menu.
• Q while White balance dialog is active: go to WhiteBalance item in ML menu.
• Q while Picture Style dialog is active: go to Contrast item in ML menu.
• Q while AF mode dialog is active: go to Trap Focus item in ML menu.

• Q while Drive mode dialog is active: go to LCD Remote Shot item in ML menu.
• Q while Flash exposure comp. dialog is active: go to Flash AEcomp item in ML menu.
• Q while Quality dialog (picture quality) is active: go to Auto Burst PicQ item in ML menu.

• Q while LiveView zoom is active: go to Magic Zoom item in ML menu.

• MENU while recording will clear the screen and force a redraw of ML elements.
• SET in LiveView: center AF area (the little rectangle).
• MENU DISP: display extra info like shutter count and CMOS temperature.

• ERASE: display Magic Lantern menu.

• Arrows, SET, DISP/PLAY, Q: ML menu navigation (see below).
• Half-shutter press at startup: loads vanilla firmware (does not load Magic Lantern). This
does not work in video mode; it works best in P, Tv, Av or M modes.

Menu options
Press ERASE button to show the menu. Use arrows to navigate, SET to change values forwards
and DISP to change values backwards. Some options may also use the Q button, or may have
a different meaning for DISP.
For one-handed navigation in ML menu, PLAY is the same as DISP.

Audio

9
Video:Ryan’s T2i Tips and Reviews - Onboard Mic vs. ATR-3350 Lav vs Rode VideoMic
Audio tweaks.

Audio Meters: ON / OFF / MovieOnly

Draw the audio meters or not. The Movie Only settings enables audio meters in
movie mode only (default).

Analog Gain (dB)

Gain applied to both inputs in the analog domain - intended as mic-type preamp,
but always preferable to digital gain (unless you want different gain or run out of
analog).

L-DigitalGain and R-DigitalGain (dB)

Digital gain applied separately to the L and R channel.

AGC: ON/OFF

Enable/disable Automatic Gain Control. Turn this to OFF to prevent hiss noise
when recording silence.

Input

Audio input source for recording:

• internal mic
• int Left ext Right
• external stereo
• int Left ext Balanced (internal Left + Right from both external pins as bal-
anced audio)
• Auto int/ext: camera detects if a mic is plugged in. Int is dual mono, ext is
stereo. Does not work with AudioMon builds.

10
“Balanced audio allows for very long cable runs without interference. Usually balanced mics
have three pin XLR connectors and it is very easy to out together an XLR to Canon mic in-
put cable. Balanced allows us to use such pro mics with our little Canons and this is a very
welcome surprise for audio guys.” (source)
Wind Cut Mode: ON/OFF

Not tested. It may work, it may do nothing or it might do harm.

Monitoring-USB: ON/OFF

Audio monitoring with headphones, via USB port.

To use this feature, you may use a modified USB - RCA cable or a USB - jack
adapter. See here for details. You have to plug the USB cable after ML is loaded.
When audio monitor is enabled, it will disable USB, HDMI and maybe other func-
tions, so if you don’t use this feature, leave it OFF.
To change this setting, a camera restart may be required; ML will tell you to do so
if it’s needed. This setting is saved as soon as you change it (so you don’t have to
save the config file before restarting).

Output volume (dB)

Volume for audio monitoring. It does not have effect on the internal camera speaker.

LiveV

LiveView overlays: histogram, zebras, cropmarks, spotmeter, focus peaking, false color...
11
Global Draw: ON/OFF

Enable/disable drawing extra graphics elements (zebra, cropmarks, histogram,

waveform, false color, spotmeter, audio meters, ML shooting info...).
Tip: use this to quickly turn them off.

Histo/Wavefm: ON/Luma/RGB for histogram, OFF/Small/Large for waveform

Shows the distribution of image brightness levels with:

• a histogram plot (Luma or RGB, toggle with SET)

• a waveform plot (toggle with Q)

Zebras: ON/OFF/NRec, lo_level..hi_level

Enable/disable zebra stripes, which indicate overexposed or underexposed

areas.
NRec setting: zebras are only displayed while not recording.
Keys:

• SET: toggle between ON/OFF/NRec

• DISP: change threshold for underexposure (blacks)
• Q: change threshold for overexposure (whites)
Brightness values are between 0 and 255. A threshold equal to 0 will disable blue
zebras, and 255 will disable red zebras.

False color

This is an aid for evaluating the exposure. See this thread for details.
• Always ON: self-explaining.
• Hold Flas/DOF: false color overlay will appear only when you press this key:
– flash button in Movie mode
– DOF preview button in Photo mode
• Togg Flas/DOF: false color appearance will be toggled by the shortcut keys
above-mentioned.
The implementation uses a half-resolution C code.

12
Cropmks(x/n)

Select cropmarks (cycle between them).

There are 4 predefined cropmarks in the zip archive:
• 16:9 black bars
• HD with Title & Action Safe
• Cinemascope
• Fisheye for stills framing with Samyang/8mm.

By default, cropmarks are displayed only in Movie mode. To display them in photo
modes, disable crop.movieonly.
If you use custom cropmarks, place them in CROPMKS folder on your SD card and
give them short 8.3 names. The number in paranthesis Cropmks(x/n) shows the
selected cropmark number and the number of detected cropmarks. You can place
at most 9 cropmarks on the card.
An exclamation mark (!) displayed in the menu means there was an error loading
the cropmark image.
Get more cropmarks created by Magic Lantern users from the ML cropmark repos-
itory.
See Cropmarks for how to create custom cropmarks.
Tip: use Debug Screenshot to get a bitmap with the correct palette.
Press Q to enable cropmarks in Playback mode.

Spotmeter: OFF / Percent / IRE

Measure brightness in the center of the frame, and display it as a percentage or IRE
value.
Keys:
• SET: enable/disable spotmeter
• Q: change measurement unit:
– Percent (0..100%)
– IRE -1..101 (formula used by AJ, which maps 0-255 brightness levels to
approx. -1..101 IRE)
– IRE 0..108 (formula proposed by Piers, which maps 16-235 brightness lev-
els to 7.5-100 IRE)
Note: when using low-contrast picture styles (like Marvels Cine or Superflat), the
brightness might not reach the extreme values, even under strong under/over-
exposure. This is OK.
13
ClrScreen: OFF / HalfShutter / WhenIdle

Clear image overlays from LiveView display.

• HalfShutter: Hold the shutter half-pressed, or the * button, or DOF preview
for around 1 second, and this will clear all the overlays from the Live View
display (audio, zebra, crops, shutter speeds...). It allows you to compose the
picture without any extra distractions.
This works best when autofocus is assigned to the * button (from Custom
Functions, set CFn.9 to 1: Shutter/AE lock button = AE lock/AF).
• WhenIdle: In this mode, all the overlays are erased from the screen (100%
clean display) when the camera is idle.
The overlays (zebras & friends) will be back when you enter the Q menu or
when you press the shutter half-way, and then disappear.

This function works by temporarily disabling the bitmap overlay. All the overlay
graphics will be restored when the overlay is enabled again.
To clear garbage left on the screen, press MENU twice (don’t use ClrScreen for this).

Focus Peak: OFF/HDIF/MORF, threshold, color_mode

Experimental focus peaking.

See Focus Assist and discussion thread.

• SET: toggle beteween available algorithms or turn the setting off

– HDIF: looks at difference between adjacent pixels. Detects horizontal edges
only. It is fooled by high-contrast, out of focus edges.
– MORF: looks for fine detail lost by morphological opening and closing (which
is a kind of blurring). It handles high-contrast OOF edges well, but is very
sensitive to ISO noise.
• Q: adjust percentile threshold, between 0.1% and 5%.
• DISP: select color mode
– one of R,G,B,C,M,Y (a single color)
– cc1: color coding 1 (show edge detection threshold as color, a single color
for the entire frame; warmer = higher)
– cc2: color coding 2 (show edge strength as color for every pixel)
The implementation uses heavy downsampling to maintain speed.

Magic Zoom: OFF/Zr/ZF/ALW, Small/Med/Large, AFF/NW,NE/SE/SW

This function enables zoom while recording. It is similar to Magic Circles from AJ
builds, but here it’s square.
Modes (change with SET):
• OFF

14
 • Zr: triggered by Zoom In button, pressed either while recording or while the
LCD sensor is covered
• ZF: triggered by Zoom In button and also by rotating the focus ring (only on
lenses which report focus distance, or if you use follow focus / movie AF /
rack focus).
• ALW: always on
Size / magnification (change with DISP or PLAY):
• Small (150x150)
• Medium (250x200)
• Large (500x300)
• SmlX2 : small with x2 magnification
• MedX2 : medium with x2 magnification
Positions (change with Q):
• AFF: moves with the AF frame (the little rectangle)
• NW, NE, SE, SW: the zoom overlay is placed in one of the 4 corners. The zoomed
area is still linked to the AF frame.
Magnification (linear):
• while recording FullHD: around 2.4x.
• while not recording: around 1.5x.
• x2 setting doubles the magnification, but it does not add any extra detail (just
doubles the pixels). It may be easier to see, though.
Notes:
• On HDMI displays, it only works well during recording. It does not work on
SD (RCA) displays.
• It does not work in certain video modes (e.g. 720p) when not recording.
• Focus peaking is disabled automatically when the zoom overlay is active. If
false color mode is enabled, the zoom overlay will not work.
• Half-pressing the shutter will turn off the zoom overlay (except for “always
on” mode).

LiveView Zoom: x5 / x10 / :-)

Control the zoom feature in LiveView. Change x5/x10 settings with DISP and tog-
gle :-) with SET.
• x5: only x5 zoom will be available (disables x10 zoom)
• x10: only x10 zoom will be available (disables x5 zoom)
• x5x10: both settings available (Canon default)
• :-) Enable zoom in Face Detection mode

15
Movie
Functions specific to movie mode.

Bit Rate: FW default / CBRe / QScale

Controls H.264 bitrate used for video recording.

Modes:
• FW default: default bitrate used by Canon firmware (CBR, around 41mbps)
• CBRe: constant bitrate, emulated. Range: 1...120mbps.
• QScale: constant quality, variable bitrate (VBR). Available values: -16..-1; +16.
Lower numbers mean higher bitrates.
Keys:
• Change mode with SET
• Change numeric value with Q and DISP
Notes:

• There is a bitrate / QScale display near the red recording dot, updated every
second.
• Slower cards will not handle high bitrates, and recording will stop automati-
cally if you try to use them. This includes certain cards labeled as Class10.
• CBRe mode (emulated CBR) is implemented as variable QScale, as follows:
– QScale is adjusted in a simple feedback loop, based on bitrate estimation
(sampled 5 times per second).
– Bit rate will not be equal to the prescribed value, but it will oscillate
around it. In certain cases (e.g. strong defocus focus transitions) it will
overshoot badly and stop recording. True CBR mode or a better control
algorithm would fix this. Patches welcome :)
– The feedback loop adjusts only local (instantaneous) bitrate, which means
the video file may have different average bitrate than the one prescribed
in the menu. This is normal. To adjust the bitrate over the entire video, a
controller with integration component (e.g. PI) is required.
– If the buffer becomes full, ML will temporarily lower the bitrate by 10mb/s.
• In QScale mode, bitrate varies a lot. Try not to use very high bitrates in this
mode, because the chances of video stopping recording are very high.
• QScale can be changed during recording, but only by one unit (1) at a time.
ML will take care of this.
• Since CBRe is implemented as variable QScale, you can freely change between
CBRe and QScale during recording.
• It is not possible to change from non-QScale mode to QScale modes during
recording (which means between FW default and the other settings). If you
try to, the change will be applied only for the next video file, and CBRe may
stop working properly.
See Bit rate page for details.

16
Movie Restart: ON/OFF

While this setting is on, movie recording will restart automatically, unless stopped
by you. There will be a few seconds skipped during restarting.

Movie logging: ON/OFF

If this setting is ON, Magic Lantern will write out a metadata file for the each movie
to MVI_1234.LOG (numbered after the movie). The log file contains lens and ex-
posure info, as well as a timestamp every time any of the parameters is changed
during recording.
Log files are placed in the same folder as the movies: DCIM/100CANON/, 101CANON
etc.
Tip: you can rename LOG files to CSV and import them in Excel.

Movie AF: OFF/Hold/Cont

Experimental autofocus in movie mode. It overrides the default autofocus algo-

rithm.
Modes:
• Hold: AF only works when you press and hold the shutter halfway, or the *
button. - If you press the Canon AF buton (which is half-shutter or *, depend-
ing on your CFn.9 setting), the exposure will be changed during autofocus. -
If you press the other button, the exposure will not change during AF, but the
AF will be slower.
• Cont: AF works continuously. It will be faster when you hold the AF button.
• CFPk: a very experimental version which does not use Canon’s focus estima-
tion, but focus peaking data. It only uses the center area and computes the
absolute value of edge strengths and divides by the image brightness.
Internals
To see how the algorithm works, disable ClrScreen. You’ll see:
• NEAR/FAR: the direction in which it’s currently moving the lens.
• percentage of focus change from last step.
• red bar: current focus step size, between 0 and 64.
• blue bar: target focus rate, which is between 20% and 100% of the aggressiveness
setting. It is used to adjust the focus step size.
• mood, which can be:
– !! (confused): it doesn’t know if it’s going in the right way or not, because
the focus change rate is too small. It will avoid changing the search di-
rection until focus info becomes better. If you see it hunting in the wrong
direction, a quick press of half-shutter or * will fix this. If you are hold-
ing the AF button pressed, de-press it and press it again to reverse the
direction.

17
 – :) (happy): in this case, the focus change rate is high enough and the
algorithm believes it’s going in the correct direction (and will ignore any
hints from you regarding this).
This is a modified gradient descent algorithm. It does not have global convergence,
so in strong OOF situations it may not find focus. This can be solved with:

• Better math in the focus evaluation function, which should only have a local
max at the perfect focus point. Current functions also have small local maxima
in strong OOF regions (besides noise).
• Workarounds to avoid hunting (like the mood hack).
Tuning parameters (change with Q/DISP):
• A=1..64: maximum aggressiveness (maximum target % rate of change for
focus magnitude).
• N=0..9: noise filter (for focus derivative).

Tip: get an external microphone and place it far away from the camera (AF is noisy)

Start with LV: ON / Movie mode / All modes

Force LiveView on startup. In movie mode, this only has effect if you use unchipped
lenses. You can also force LiveView at startup in all modes.

MovieModeRemap: A-DEP / CA

Changes movie position on the mode dial. You can swap movie mode with either
A-DEP or CA.
This seems to have some side effects (like not remembering Kelvin setting).

DOF adjust: ON/OFF

Enables a shortcut key for adjusting the DOF while maintaining the same exposure.
This is done by changing aperture and ISO at the same time.
To adjust DOF, cover the LCD sensor and change the aperture.

Movie REC key: Default / HalfShutter

This option enables you to start/stop movie recording by half-pressing the shutter
button.

18
Time Indicator: OFF / Elapsed / Remain.Card / Remain.4GB

When recording a movie, ML will display a small time counter in the upper right
corner, which can be:
• Elapsed: duration of the current clip
• Remain.Card: estimated amount of recording time remaining on the card.
• Remain.4GB: estimated amount of recording time until reaching 4GB (or until
filling the card, whichever comes first).
Unlike Canon’s timer which assumes constant bitrate, ML timer assumes variable
bitrate and works even if QScale is enabled. However, due to variations in bitrate,
the estimated value will fluctuate a lot, and this is normal.

Shoot

Functions for stills shooting (some of them work for movies, too).

HDR Brack

AE Bracketing for HDR images and timelapses.

Select number of images with SET and step size with DISP. To turn this off quickly,
press Q.
In M mode, this function does shutter bracketing. In the other modes it does expo-
sure compensation bracketing.
HDR images can be taken with:
• ML remote triggers: LCD face sensor & audio trigger.
• ML intervalometer (for HDR timelapse)
• Press the shutter. In this case, the first image will have the middle exposure
(without EV compensation), and the 2-second self-timer will be used. Also,
this mode only works with 3 images or more.

19
 For best results, switch to manual focus.
For each HDR picture set, Magic Lantern also writes a bash script for stacking the
exposures with enfuse. The scripts are stored in DCIM/###CANON and are named
after the first picture in set, e.g. if the HDR sequence is created from IMG_1001.JPG
... IMG_1005.JPG, the HDR script will be named HDR_1001.SH and the resulting
HDR image will be saved as HDR_1001.JPG.
To run the HDR scripts on the computer, move the scripts and the JPGs in the same
directory and run (for example):
bash HDR_1001.SH
or, for processing all the images at once:
for f in $(ls *.SH); do bash $f ; done
On Windows, you can use Cygwin or MSYS to run the scripts.
Don’t forget to delete the scripts from the card; the camera won’t delete them!

Take a pic every X seconds / Record Y seconds, pause X seconds

Change the intervalometer settings (first setting appears in photo mode, second
appears in movie mode).
There is also a mode named Take pics like crazy, which does exactly that. This
is the best tool for killing your shutter.

Intervalometer: ON/OFF, Wait/NoWait

Video:T2i Timelapse
Start/stop intervalometer.
• In photo mode, it takes a sequence of photos with a fixed rate or delay (toggle
with Q):
– Wait: intervalometer waits until the picture is taken and saved to card,
then starts counting the time for the next picture (default, fixed delay with
1-second resolution).
– NoWait: timer for next shot starts as soon as current shot was triggered (it
does not wait for exposure to finish, nor for picture to be saved). This en-
sures precise timing between shots (fixed rate). If the total time required
for taking a picture is larger than the interval between two shots, it will
miss some frames.
The Wait/NoWait setting has no effect in movie, HDR or bulb timer modes.
• In movie mode, it takes a sequence of small videos
– When HDR Bracket is active, each movie will be exposed according to the
bracketing settings, and the duration of the movie will be multiplied by
number of exposures.
– To use the intervalometer in movie mode, make sure Silent Picture is OFF.
You can stop the intervalometer either from ML menu, or by pressing MENU or
PLAY. You can pause the intervalometer by holding the shutter halfway.
Tips:

20
 • Shoot in manual mode and switch the lens to MF.
• To save the shutter count when doing timelapses, enable Silent Picture or use
the intervalometer in Movie mode.
• Do not use the intervalometer in LiveView with “noisy” mode (otherwise
your shutter will wear twice as fast than outside LV).
• If the intervalometer can’t be stopped (it may happen in crazy mode), turn
the camera off or open the card door.

Power Saving:
• When not in LiveView, press DISP to turn the display off. You may also cover
the LCD sensor with something.
• In LiveView, enable Force display off and disable Global Draw. You also have
to assign the focus on the * button (otherwise the screen will wake up). ML
will NOT turn off the sensor.
• While the intervalometer is running, the card led will blink once per second
to let you know it’s alive and kicking.
Note: ML will emulate half-shutter presses every second to prevent the camera
from entering stand-by mode. You have to make sure it won’t autofocus.
LCD Remote Shot: OFF/Near/Away/Wave

Start/stop remote shutter release mode with the LCD sensor.

• a Near: To take a picture, put your hand near the LCD sensor.
• b Away: Picture is taken when you get your hand away from the sensor. You
may combine this setting with Mirror Lockup.
• Wave: Picture is taken after you wave your hand 3 times near the sensor.
You can leave it on without interfering (too much) with normal shooting.
This is useful for avoiding camera shake without extra $$$, especially if you don’t
have a sturdy tripod.
In Movie mode, the Wave setting is able to start and stop recording movies. The
other modes can only start recording (because it’s too easy to stop recording by
mistake).

Audio RemoteShot: ON/OFF

Start/stop remote audio trigger. To take a picture (or start recording a movie),
make some loud noise, for example, clap your hands or pop a balloon.
Audio threshold can be set from magic.cfg by changing audio.release.level
(default 700), or by adjusting the audio gain.
You can also start movie recording with this feature.
In photo mode, you can combine this option with the self-timer (may be useful for
group or self pictures).
Be careful: this may trigger the shutter from the sounds made by camera (like focus
beep or liveview switch).

21
Trap Focus: OFF/Hold/Cont.

Takes a picture when the subject comes into focus.

Modes:
• Hold: You hold the shutter half-pressed; camera takes a picture when some-
thing comes into focus.
• Cont.: (buggy, disabled) You don’t have to hold the shutter half-pressed; ML
will emulate half-shutter presses instead. This will disable some buttons (like
MENU and PLAY), so turn it off from ML menu before doing anything else.

Trap focus works only when the lens is set to Manual focus (MF).
• Outside LiveView, it only works with lenses with chip.
• In LiveView it only works for photos, in Hold mode, and it will take a picture
when the focus indicator has (almost) maximum value on the focus graph.
Notes:
– You may have to turn the lens back and forth a few times in order to let
ML compute the correct focus scaling for the current scene.
– If you move from a high-contrast scene to a low-contrast one, you will
also have to wait a bit until the high-contrast data disappears from the
focus graph.

Motion Detect: ON/OFF

Experimental motion detection. Right now it only reacts to brightness change in

the middle of the LiveView image.

Flash / No flash: ON/OFF

(disabled, is anyone using it?)

This will toggle flash setting (on/off) after each photo:
• Even pictures (by file number) will be taken without flash
• Odd pictures will be taken with flash
This function works only in P,A,S,M modes. The effect is somewhat similar to Fuji’s
Natural Light with Flash mode.
Don’t forget to pop up the flash :)

Silent Picture / Silent Pic HiRes / Silent Pic LongX / Slit-scan Pic

This can take pictures in LiveView mode without moving the mirror. When en-
abled, it saves uncompressed YUV422 frames from the LiveView buffer when you
press the shutter halfway.

• Make sure you don’t have autofocus assigned to half-shutter press (put it on
* or turn it off)

22
 Modes:
• Silent Picture: simple, low-resolution. Image resolution is usually around
1 or 2 MPix, and depends on the current mode (zoom or not, recording or not,
and movie resolution). Details here.
• Silent Pic Hi-Res: emulates high-resolution by taking a matrix of small
silent pics, in zoom x5 mode. You need to have the camera on a tripod and
the scene should be almost stationary (a pic is taken in a few seconds). Useful
for timelapse. Only works well with manual focus.
• Silent Pic LongX: (does not work yet) emulate a long exposure and/or a
very low ISO, by stacking lots of simple silent pics. This may fail in high-
resolution modes due to lack of memory.
• Slit-scan Pic: this takes distorted images like these. This mode is basically
an extreme jello effect which can be used in creative ways.
Keys:
• SET: toggle modes (normal or hi-res)
• DISP/Q: toggle between:
– Single/Burst in normal mode
– available matrix sizes (which give the image resolutions) in Hi-Res mode.
– exposure time (0.1s ... 8h) and image stacking method for luma channel
(AVG or MAX) in long exposure mode. Chroma is always stacked with AVG.
– timing (number of clocks to skip after each line) in Slit-scan mode.
Silent picture setting is applied to intervalometer and remote triggers when used
in LiveView mode.
Images are saved in DCIM/1xxCANON/ after the following rules:
• If intervalometer is OFF, silent pics are named after last picture/movie
taken without this function (e.g. 1234-001.422). You are limited to
1000 silent pictures for each “noisy” picture.
• If intervalometer is ON, silent pics have names like 12345678.422.
Tip: use File Numbering Manual Reset from Canon menu to in-
crease folder number (to sort them easier).
To convert a 422 image to JPEG on the PC, use 422-jpg.exe (Windows and Wine)
or 422-jpg.py (all platforms, you need to install Python, PIL and numpy). Double-
click it, then select a single 422 file, or click Cancel and select a folder with 422 files.
You can also use this program in command-line.
TODO:
• avoid that horizontal cut in pictures (vsync doesn’t help and there’s not enough
RAM to buffer an entire image)

Bulb Timer: 1s...8h

Very long exposures with Bulb mode and ML timer. Only works with remote trig-
gers and intervalometer. You should select M mode and BULB setting from Canon
UI before using this.
Tip: you can cancel the exposure earlier by half-pressing the shutter button.
23
Mirror Lockup: OFF / ON / Timer+Remote

Mirror Lockup. ML will always override this setting => you can’t change it from
Canon menu any more.
• OFF: always off
• ON: always on
• Timer+Remote: this will auto-enable MLU under one of the following condi-
tions (and disable it otherwise):
– self-timer mode is on (either 2 second or 10 second, but not continuous)
– LCD Remote Shot is in Away mode.

Expo

Adjusting the exposure parameters. Most of these settings only work in Manual (photo and
video), and some of them work in P, Av and Tv too.

ISO: 100-25600

Custom steps for ISO. Possible values:

0 (Auto), 100, 110, 115, 125, 140, 160, 170, 185, 200, 220, 235, 250, 280, 320, 350, 380,
400, 435, 470, 500, 580, 640, 700, 750, 800, 860, 930, 1000, 1100, 1250, 1400, 1500,
1600, 1750, 1900, 2000, 2250, 2500, 2750, 3000, 3200, 3500, 3750, 4000, 4500, 5000,
5500, 6000, 6400, 7200, 8000, 12800, 25600.
To get ISO values higher than 6400, turn on ISO Expansion from Custom Functions
(CFn 1). To get ISO lower than 200, turn HTP off. In video mode, ISO only goes up
to 6400. These is also true without ML.
To get only “round” ISO values, i.e. 100, 160, 200, 320, 400, 640, 800, 1250, 1600,
2500, 3200, 6400, 12800 and 25600, enable iso.round.only from magic.cfg.
In manual exposure modes (photo and video), press the Q button on this entry to
set the ISO value automatically.
• When LiveView is active, a binary search algorithm is used; the search criteria
is a good balance between overexposure and underexposure; search resolu-
tion is 1/8EV. If the contrast is very low, the histogram will be centered.
• When LiveView is off, ISO is set using the Auto ISO feature from Canon
firmware, in 1EV steps.

24
WhiteBalance: 1700...10000

Kelvin white balance.

In LiveView, press the Q button on this entry to set the WB temperature using the
center color as reference gray. The measurement area is 200x200 pixels, centered.

WBShift G/M: Green 0..9 / Magenta 0..9

Green-Magenta white balance shift. Useful for fluorescent lighting.

Shutter: 1/30...1/4000

Custom steps for shutter speed. Possible values:

1/30, 33, 37, 40, 45, 50, 53, 57, 60, 67, 75, 80, 90, 100, 110, 115, 125, 135, 150, 160,
180, 200, 210, 235, 250, 275, 300, 320, 360, 400, 435, 470, 500, 550, 600, 640, 720, 800,
875, 925, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1250, 1400, 1600, 1750, 1900, 2000, 2150, 2300, 2500, 2800,
3200, 3500, 3750, 4000.
In manual exposure modes (photo and video), press the Q button on this entry to
set the shutter value automatically.

• When LiveView is active, a binary search algorithm is used; the search criteria
is a good balance between overexposure and underexposure; search resolu-
tion is 1/8EV. If the contrast is very low, the histogram will be centered.
• When LiveView is off, the shutter value is computed with the help of Auto ISO
feature from Canon firmware, in 1EV steps. This feature is still experimental
and sometimes it does not work.

Aperture: f/1.2...f/45.0

Adjust aperture.

Light Adjust: OFF/ALO strong/HTP

Select the light adjustment algorithm:

• OFF
• Auto Lighting Optimizer (strong)
• Highlight Tone Priority.

PictureStyle

Change picture style. You can see the effect on LiveView instantly.

Contrast/Saturation: -4..4

Adjusts the contrast and the saturation of the current picture style.
WARNING: this will modify your current picture style.

25
Flash AEcomp: -10..3 EV

Flash exposure compensation.

Focus

Video:Magic Lantern for Canon 550D - Rack Focus Tutorial

Focus dir

This is the direction the lens moves when pressing the camera’s Zoom Out button
to set the focus start and end points.

Focus A

This is end point of rack focus. To set, focus the lens with the Zoom Out button,
then press "Set".
The start point will be the point where you are before selecting “Rack focus“ in the
menu.

Rack Focus

Triggers the rack focus operation that moves between the start and end focus points.
After the move is complete pressing again reverses the move.

Focus speed

Adjust rack focus / follow focus speed, in focus steps.

Follow Focus: OFF / Manual / AutoLock

Very simple follow focus (like a rack focus controlled manually).

When this setting is enabled, it will change the default behavior of arrow keys. The
default key assignment works well for Canon lenses and works according to the
following table:

26
 Key Speed Direction
LEFT slow 1x far + Â
RIGHT slow 1x near - ¸
UP fast 5x far + Á
DOWN fast 5x near - »

You can reverse the direction for these keybindings:

• Press Q to reverse the direction for LEFT/RIGHT keys (slow speed)
• Press DISP to reverse the direction for UP/DOWN keys (fast speed)
To use the default behavior of the arrow keys (i.e. move the AF frame), cover the
LCD sensor.
Modes:
• Manual: focus ring moves as long as you hold the key pressed.
• AutoLock: follow focus will stop automatically when a focus peak is detected
in current AF frame (in a way similar to Trap Focus). Look at the focus graph
to see when it’s about to lock the focus. To focus past the peak point, de-press
the button and press it again.
Tip: you can adjust focus speed (which is multiplied by the x from the table above).

Run Stack focus

This selection will shoot a series of photographs with varying focus points. You
can also call this “focus bracketing”. It is used in macro photography to assemble
sharper final images by merging photos where each has a different focus point.
To configure focus step and number of photos, use the hidden settings focus.step
and focus.count.

The following items are display only:

Focal Dist

The distance to the focal point. Value is returned by most newer Canon lenses. If
the lens does not report any distance information, 0 will be displayed and the DOF
calculations will not be correct.
See also Focus distance.

Hyperfocal

The hyperfocal distance is the point of focus where everything from half that dis-
tance to infinity falls within the depth of field. This is the largest depth of field
possible for the current f-number.

DOF Near

The nearest distance in which objects appear in focus.

27
DOF Far

The farthest distance in which objects appear in focus.

How rack focus works

Now that you know what the buttons are about, here is how you make it work:
1. Pick the end point of rack focus by focusing on it (manually or with AF).
2. Open the Focus menu, go to Focus A and press Set to zero it out.
3. Pick the start point by focusing on it from ML controls. Do NOT use
autofocus and do NOT focus manually from the lens ring.

To focus the lens, make sure it is set on AF and use one of the following:
• Option 1: choose Focus dir and hold on the * button (Zoom Out) or
Half Shutter while Focus menu is active.
• Option 2: enable Follow focus, close the focus menu and focus with
the arrows.

4. Select the focus speed. The number varies between different lenses and
represents raw encoder steps for the focus motor.
5. Next, start movie recording (you can do that while ML menu is active).
6. Go to Rack Focus and press SET to start rack focus. You should see the
rack focus commence and complete its cycle.
7. To return to the beginning point, you can press SET again to return to that
point, once again.

Note: the rack focus command may “stutter” while racking with some lenses, causing over-
shoot or undershoot of the desired position. This feature is still under development and should
be more mature in a later version.
See also the description from the 5D2 ML User Guide.

Debug

ForceDisplayOFF

This will turn off the LCD display while the camera is not expecting user input (i.e.
when no menus are shown on the screen).
While the screen is off, the card led will blink once per 5 seconds to let you know
the camera is alive and kicking. No card activity is actually taking place (just LED
blinking).
See Power saving for more info.
28
SensorShortcuts: ON/OFF

Enable the use of LCD sensor as an extra shift key. This function allows you to
adjust white balance, LCD backlight level, move the AF frame when follow focus
is active, or trigger Magic Zoom when not recording.
Disable this option if you are using a device which covers the LCD sensor.

AF frame: Default / AutoHide

Control the appearance of AF frame:

• Default: no change (just like the standard firmware)
• AutoHide: the AF frame is only displayed when you move it, and then it
disappears after 1 second or so.

Auto Burst PicQ: ON/OFF

When enabled, it will temporarily reduce picture quality in burst mode in order to
maintain a decent frame rate even when the buffer becomes almost full.
This function will reduce picture quality in the following steps:

• RAW+JPG RAW JPG Large Fine JPG Medium Fine

• JPG Large Coarse JPG Medium Coarse

Draw palette

Tests the 8-bit bitmap palette, which is used for video overlays. See VRAM.

Screenshot (10 s)

Print screen after 10 seconds. It it saves a BMP file for the overlays and a 422 file
(silent picture) for the LiveView image. The BMP does not contain transparency
data. You can combine the two files in GIMP or other image editing programs.
A small timer is displayed. After 5 seconds, it won’t be updated any more (which
lets you remove it from the screenshot by triggering a redraw).

Debug logging: ON/OFF

When enabled, the camera stores a log which contains DebugMsg output. Press Q
to dump the log to a file on the SD card. Disabling this setting might save a few
CPU cycles.
See Debugging Magic Lantern page.

Spy prop/evt/mem

• prop: display property changes in real-time. See Properties.

• evt: Display GUI events in real-time. See GUI_Events/550D.

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 • mem: Display memory addresses which change, but not those which change
like mad. Useful for detecting interesting Memory Addresses inside the cam-
era RAM (like sensor & button locations).

Some items from this menu may not be available in release builds; you can uncomment them
from debug.c and create a custom autoexec.bin.

Config
Magic Lantern saves its settings in a configuration file named magic.cfg. This menu lets you
customize how these settings are saved.
Config AutoSave: ON/OFF

If enabled, settings are saved automatically to magic.cfg when you turn off the
camera, or when you open the card door. Settings are NOT saved when you open
the battery door.

Save config now

Saves ML settings to magic.cfg.

Delete config file

Deletes magic.cfg, which will restore ML default settings at next boot.

Note: This item will also disable Config AutoSave, in order to make sure the config
file won’t be re-created at shutdown.

DISP presets: 1..4

This feature lets you use up to 4 display presets for the settings in the LiveV menu.
On the top bar, you will see DISP 0, 1, 2 or 3. Each of those is a preset for the settings
in LiveV menu. So you can, for example, configure DISP 1 with false colors, DISP
2 with zebras and focus peaking, and DISP 3 with clear display.
DISP presets named 1, 2 and 3 are only used when Canon info display is inactive.
When Canon info display is active, ML will use the DISP 0 preset (which does not
display anything by default).
This menu item sets the maximum number of available DISP presets. To disable
this feature, set the number of presets to 1.

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Extra info displays

Main shooting screen (outside LiveView)

• Clock (bottom of screen)

• ISO value in finer increments (above Canon’s ISO display)
• Trap Focus status (near MF icon)
• Kelvin temperature (in the white balance box)

• WB shift values for BA and GM

• Flash setting (under clock)
• HDR setting (under battery icon)

• MLU setting (under Q icon)

• LCD remote status icon: ab

MENU DISP

• Shutter counter. Only counts pictures taken, not LV switches or quick focus attempts.
• CMOS temp: temperature of the CMOS sensor (EFIC temperature), in raw units. Before,
this was in the Debug menu.

• Lens name

This info also appears on error displays (e.g. ERR 70).

LiveView
• Bottom bar (displayed only when Canon bottom bar is hidden):

– Current shooting mode

– Lens focal length and aperture,
– shutter, ISO, white balance, WB shift

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 – Focus_distance
– Exposure compensation (codenamed AE)

• Top bar (displayed only when audio meters are not shown):
– Clock
– Current display preset
– Picture quality setting
– Number of pictures remaining (estimated)
– Free space remaining, in GB (may be incorrect on certain cards)
• In the middle of the screen:

– Spotmeter
• Around the recording dot:
– Time remaining display
– Bitrate info (instant and average bitrate, and qscale factor)
• Left side:
– Status for trap focus / follow focus / movie AF.

• Top side:
– Audio meters and audio input source for each channel
– LCD remote status icon: ab

• Focus Graph
This item is displayed when you enable Movie AF, Trap Focus or Follow Focus with
AutoLock.
It draws a small graph which shows the amount of focus in the AF frame (the little rect-
angle), over the last few seconds. Focus computation is done by Canon’s autofocus al-
gorithm.
Since the function which measures the amount of focus is heavily influenced by other
factors (like contrast and exposure), ML attempts to normalize the value.
If you are focusing manually, try to position the lens such as you get a local maxima on
the focus graph.

Power saving
Magic Lantern can help you maximize battery life while shooting, which also results in re-
duced overheat.
You can:

• Turn off display in LiveView mode

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 • Turn off Global Draw
• Quickly adjust LCD backlight level

Power consumption in movie mode, idle, 24p (approximate figures derived from this test):

Item Current (approx)

Camera body (without lens), LCD off 360 mA
Lens (Tamron 17-50/2.8) 20 mA
LCD backlight at level 1 40 mA
LCD backlight at level 7 100 mA
Magic Lantern with GlobalDraw off around 10 mA
Zebras around 15 mA
Focus peaking maybe 25 mA (not tested)

Power consumption varies with the frame rate. The following table shows the difference be-
tween video modes. The test was done on a 550d with ML, body cap only, movie standby, lcd
brightness 4, default settings, i.e. no magic.cfg at startup.

NTSC PAL
Video mode Current Video mode Current
1080 30p 480 mA 1080 25p 450 mA
1080 24p 440 mA 1080 24p 440 mA
720 60p 520 mA 720 50p 490 mA
480 60p 520 mA 480 50p 490 mA
crop 60p 430 mA crop 50p 420 mA

According to this message, by turning off Global Draw and LCD display, the camera will be
able to record over 80 minutes continuously, without overheating (compared with around 30
minutes with default settings and 60 minutes without ML).

Hidden settings
The configuration file (MAGIC.CFG) lets you tweak various hidden settings using a simple text
editor (Notepad, gedit, vi...), and is also used to save Magic Lantern configuration from the
GUI menu.
These settings can not be changed from the ML menu:

# if set to 1, disable the bootdisk flag.

# This does the same thing as Debug Autoboot menu item.
# Only for advanced users!!!
magic.disable_bootdiskf = 0

# Delay between clearing the overlay in Clear Preview mode

clear.preview.delay = 500

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# Stack focus step size and frame count
focus.step = 100
focus.count = 5

# Threshold for audio trigger

audio.release.level = 700

# Delay between two sub-pics in hi-res silent pic mode

silent.pic.sweepdelay = 350

# Zebra density: 0, 1 or 2
zebra.density = 2

# Only select "round" ISO values in menu:

# 100,200,400,800,1600,3200,6400,12800,25600,
# 160,320,640,1250,2500.
iso.round.only = 1

# Emulate a SET press when you press the shutter half-way

# in photo dialogs and menu (so all dialogs like WB, self-timer,
# AF mode, flash setting etc. will behave like the ISO one)
#
# Set it on 0 to restore default firmware behavior
set.on.halfshutter = 1

# Allow zoom in Quick Review mode (only works when Image Review = Hold)
# This works by faking a Play button press after you take a pic.
# Side effect: some delay until you see the picture after you take it
quick.review.allow.zoom = 1

# If enabled, it will show cropmarks only in movie mode.

# Disable it to show cropmarks in photo mode too.
crop.movieonly = 0

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