Canon DSLR Hack Allows It To Shoot RAW Video 171
When the Canon 50D DSLR camera was released back in 2008, it could take nice pictures, but it had no support for video recording. Now, through an enterprising hack by members of the Magic Lantern forums, the 50D can capture RAW video. From the article:
"The tech inside the 50D looks like it borrows a lot more from its higher-end siblings, like the 5D Mark II, and it’s possible we may actually get better RAW video quality out of the 50D than we do out of any of the non-CF Canon cameras. ... The camera doesn’t have playback or audio recording as it was never designed to shoot video, but this isn’t too different from the RAW recording on the other Canon DSLRs at the moment."
Now that is a kickass hack! (Score:4, Informative)
Now that is a kickass hack! Seriously, taking hardware with limited functionality and actually adding (not just restoring) functionality to it that was not planned for it is pretty cool.
This is not like the "triple core" or "double core" CPUs being "hacked" into quad-cores when the crippling was just the setting low of a line or setting of a jumper on the chip. That was back when they were making all the chips quad cores and then crippling them as needed to meet market need: more dual cores were being purchased because of the lower price point, so the manufacturer just intentionally "disavowed" the extra cores on those chips, just to make a sale at that price point.
Of course, due to some hardware limitations, it can just record bursts of 59 frames at a time (probably RAM buffer limits since the RAW video takes up hella lot of data):
The 50d can already shoot DNG silent bursts with maximum resolutions of 1592x1062 (buffer is full at 59 frames) in 1x mode and 1992x1080 (buffer is full at 53 frames) in crop mode thanks to @smeangol http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5481.msg37526#msg37526 [magiclantern.fm]
@coutts has found the stubs for the 40d which means it is 'likely' that the 40d can do raw video and DNG bursts however it will need porting and developing.
@Smeangol is having some success in porting the raw recording feature however some other developer assistance may be required to iron out bugs.
Re:im confused here (Score:5, Informative)
Most of these are probably sitting in closets or got recycled by now.
This isn't a disposable point and shoot, it's a $1400 dSLR discontinued less than 3 years ago, with a still competitive specification. I'd hazard a guess that most of them are still in active use. Also, from the article "The tech inside the 50D looks like it borrows a lot more from its higher-end siblings, like the 5D Mark II, and it's possible we may actually get better RAW video quality out of the 50D than we do out of any of the non-CF Canon cameras." ('non-CF' cameras would include the current 60D model and below).
Re:im confused here (Score:4, Informative)
No, they are not. There are many reasons this was not enabled on the original camera, but let's take a look at some of them.
This is not today usable to anyone but the most hard-core video enthusiasts. Think about it. This is raw video. The recommended cards to use are 1000x cards (which were not available at the time and quite expensive today). You should have 64G cards or bigger in order to put more than a couple of minutes worth of video on the card. Then you need to post-process what is basically a bunch of images. After Effects is not something the average user has. Also, the camera doesn't have microphone input, so there is no way you can get audio in the video from the camera. Etc, and so forth.
This is for movie makers who are happy bringing dozens of CF cards at $300 a pop on a shoot. Most people doesn't spend $3000 on a camera, let alone 10 compact flash cars so they can shoot for an hour.
Re:im confused here (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the sensors used in Canon and Nikon cameras are manufactured by Canon and Nikon on Canon and Nikon Lithographic processes, and are used exclusively in Canon and Nikon cameras. You can't buy the sensors for use in your own camera and what is available commercially is substantially inferior to those produced by Canon and Nikon (and Sony).
In fact there are cameras with free software firmware, including digital cinema cameras similar to what this hack does, however the quality of the sensors used in them is inferior, resulting in an inferior camera. Also Canon and Nikon DSLRs have extremely good opto-mechanical assemblies, which would be hard to match.
Nikon is a leader in precision engineering, they built one of the first ruling engines which is a pretty critical piece of precision machinery for bootstrapping photolithography as it is used to produce linear diffraction gratings which is critical to all photolithographic processes, additionally Canon and Nikon are two of the very few (I can also think of Minolta, Carl Zeiss, ASML and Applied Materials) companies worldwide that produce steppers which are used for patterning semiconductor wafers. The precision construction of lens and mirrors is the dominant limiting factor in geometry reductions in photolithography, so it follows that companies with a long history of making quality optical components and devices are also leaders in the field of photolithography. As I'm sure you are aware, this type of equipment and processing is extremely expensive (billions of dollars).
So nothing is stopping you, except billions of dollars of capital you don't have.