Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexAltea | Hacker News Reader

This is possible by interfacing directly with the sensor MMIO registers. I've always found fascinating how much flexibility hardware provides, compared with the typically rigid functionality the drivers expose to userland.

I wonder what we could make out of many high-end cameras if only we had enough patience and motivated people to reverse engineer everything that has been hidden away by comfort abstractions.

View on HN

If you want the answer to that question, look no further than the magic lantern project. It’s not supported like it used to be, but those guys were incredible at unlocking what Canon DSLR’s could really do. I was a legend in my film community when I booted it onto a 5Diii and got it shooting 1080p raw. All I did was follow their instructions lol

Those guys were my intro to tech! I remember shooting RAW on an old 50d and Dual ISO on my 6d!

Was your 50D a smoking just after a minute? Lol

No it handled it like a champ! It could actually record higher resolution than my much newer 6d. It used a compact flash which was much faster than an SD

Fun stuff! Yeah I did the raw hack on a 5diii. Gorgeous image, couldn’t believe the DR I was getting. Canon should be ashamed for keeping all the firepower under lock and key! Guess that doesn’t help love C-cameras though lol

Fun times! Thanks for bringing me back

Last time I've checked there was nothing like that for Nikon? What is the reason? Or there is something?

I've heard that Canon's DIGIC processors are just slightly customized versions of the DaVinci media processors, which have a all documentation openly available, while Nikon's EXPEED processors are based on a closed product line by Socionext with basically zero public documentation and heavy customization.

Though there used to be a project which worked on a few of the older EXPEED-based cameras.

NikonHacker.com

thank you !

for anyone wondering, "MMIO registers" stands for "memory-mapped I/O" registers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_I/O

> everything that has been hidden away

It's not hidden, it's stripped according to actual product specs.

Industrial cameras (Basler/IDS) will give you access to most of the sensor capabilities if you want to prototype something.

Yeah but for the price of a good systens canera you will get only a basic industrial one with a tiny sensor and no AF

That's the price of flexibility.

It's not some inherent price. It's just an arbitrarily imposed one.

Older products, even early digital ones from 70s and 80s, were more flexible for the end user (and often came with manuals and schematics) even in their consumer version.

An industrial product has different requirements compared with a consumer product. I am really curious how many hours of continous operation my camera can sustain.

Magic Lantern is a firmware mod for Canon cameras and it gives you more features and control over your hardware. I love this kind of low level mods.

https://magiclantern.fm/features.html

Link is dead.

works for me

Dead for me too.

Does it work currently? I can't get the domain name to resolve.

Okay, that's bizarre. When I first clicked the link, the domain name failed to resolve for me too. When I reloaded it, though, it resolved. If anyone else is having trouble, give it a bit and try reloading the page.

the domain magiclantern.fm expired on 12/13/21, it's name servers were updated on 12/27 to EXPIRED.DNAPI.NET DOMAIN.DNAPI.NET

25.0%: Refused at domain.dnapi.net (193.227.117.66)

25.0%: Refused at expired.dnapi.net (194.50.187.66)

25.0%: Query timed out at dns1.idnz.net (108.166.170.106) While querying domain.dnapi.net/IN/A

25.0%: Query timed out at dns1.idnz.net (108.166.170.106) While querying expired.dnapi.net/IN/A

Some opendns resolvers have it cached still: 176.9.31.214

I've tried to resolve the domain via 8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1, 9.9.9.9, 208.67.222.222, and 4.2.2.1 without luck. They all return status: SERVFAIL.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicLantern/comments/rpvv2n/fyi_si...

They are aware and are working on it.

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20211210011209/https://magiclant...

Seems confirmed by the Magic Lantern team: https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicLantern/comments/rpvv2n/fyi_si...

Also see CHDK [1], a FOSS firmware replacement for Canon point-and-shoot cameras.

[1] https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK

Magic Lantern basically is the reason my t3i got me into film festivals lol

Ironically, I find the popularity of hardware hacks to be a sign of general stagnation, because there were periods of time in the past when they would not give as much boost in performance as a new version of something in a few months to a year. They were typically not worth the time and would be rendered obsolete, but now more and more they are worthwhile.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com