Camera downloads - a word of warning

Garry Edwards · 9 May 2014

A Lencarta customer phoned because his Atom flash was only firing every second time that he pressed the magic button on his Canon 7D.
Being a clever whatsit, I was sure that he had selected the wrong mode on the Atom and had it in S2 mode, where it disregards a pre-flash.

But he phoned back, because it made no difference. We then had a long conversation about his camera settings and as I'm not a Canon user I passed him on to James, who also has a 7D.

Long story short. He had downloaded "Magic Lantern" to his camera and this had overwritten his camera settings, apparently making it impossible to use the camera with flash.

domino1999 · 9 May 2014

Good to know. I've been tempted to give Magic Lantern a try for a while, but think I'll give it a miss now.

redsnappa · 9 May 2014

I use Magic Lantern and have no problems whatsoever when using on board or studio flash (I don't use Lencarta flash heads)

Garry Edwards · 9 May 2014

redsnappa said:
I use Magic Lantern and have no problems whatsoever when using on board or studio flash (I don't use Lencarta flash heads)

This has nothing to do with the flash heads, as explained in my first post. According to the customer, it changed the camera settings and prevented the camera from triggering the flash.

MatBin · 9 May 2014

What triggered the flash to fire every other time?

sk66 · 9 May 2014

Well sure, if you're going to hack your camera there's a risk of some weird behavior... especially if you load the latest beta version. That said, from everything I've heard the stable releases of ML are quite reliable... I haven't used it in several years though (I no longer own a Canon).

ding76uk · 11 May 2014

I can't see this personally, but it may be right. Thing is if it were common it would be all over forums and sites, but it doesn't seem to be.

Calzor Suzay · 12 May 2014

I didn't think ML was permanent but read from the CF card each time, don't use a ML CF card and it should be back to Canon standard settings.

Sharky · 12 May 2014

redsnappa said:
I use Magic Lantern and have no problems whatsoever when using on board or studio flash (I don't use Lencarta flash heads)

This ^^, i use Magiclantern or TragicLantern without issues on my 50d, the nightly builds.

As others have mentioned, insert a memory card without ML installed and it's back to the Canon firmware so it's easy to eliminate issues.

Garry Edwards · 12 May 2014

ding76uk said:
I can't see this personally, but it may be right. Thing is if it were common it would be all over forums and sites, but it doesn't seem to be.

All that I've done is to pass on a report from a customer - I have no idea whether or not this is a common problem

ding76uk · 12 May 2014

Garry Edwards said:
All that I've done is to pass on a report from a customer - I have no idea whether or not this is a common problem

I wasn't having a pop Garry. I was simply saying that it is highly doubtful that is the cause and is probably the customer tweaking a setting by accident. ML is, as others have said memory card based and does not to my knowledge alter any settings or install anything over the top of the camera firmware.

If this were common there would be thousands of posts on the web as it is one of Canons most popular cameras.

Byker28i · 12 May 2014

There's a multitude of settings in Magic Lantern and I've not looked at it in a year, so it's bound to have even more in now. More likely he tweaked a setting he didn't know about or what it fully did.