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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Greatest Camera Firmware Hack of the Year! (1080p Video Recording with EOS 50D!)


(Above: Canon EOS 50D with 1080p video recording function!
Credit: http://www.beareyes.com.cn/2/lib/201109/01/20110901400_1.htm, Simplified Chinese)

Further to the last year famous and popular firmware hack for the GF1 for unleashing 1080p video (GF1 originally supported only 720p video recording), I have seen recently the greatest firmware hack of the year, also making 1080p video, but for the EOS 50D, which originally had NO video recording but only pure Live View function as designed! :-o

See: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Unified
(A Chinese Tutorial can be found Here (Google-translated to English))

Well, with this hack, 1080p/30 frames video recorded in a maximum length of 12 minutes is made possible, but there will be no sound - as the 50D has no microphone built-in non there is any mic input, of course.

And some screen captures of the properties of the recorded video:-


(Credit: http://www.beareyes.com.cn/2/lib/201109/01/20110901400_2.htm, Simplified Chinese)

Disclaimer: Do anything at YOUR OWN RISK! (Though a number of successful reports have been seen in some forums.)

Wow! I just wonder why there has never been any firmware hack for any Pentax DSLR now?! Even nobody ever knows how to enter the debug mode of the current Pentax DSLRs of K-5 and K-r! Why? No hacker is using any newer Pentax body?? Or the latest Pentax DSLR firmware is so strong and secure that it can never be hacked? ;-p >_<

Btw, if there is one capable hacker in the Pentaxland, would you please hack our K-x and K-r cameras to first have 1080p video and then preferably with some kind of video motion compression codec! Thanks in Advance! ;-D

Comments (3)

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A hack that brings full manual control over video (and maybe a quick access to record from LV) to Pentax would be enough for me :-)
I'm sure you guys know about the pentax hack sites, but for whatever it's worth I found this site that has a firmware file decryptor and fujitsu firmware stuff. http://www.pentax-hack.info/documents/downloads.h...
Thanks for your article!! I have a Canon 50D and I found this useful page on google. I didn't know pentax stuff but seems in your blog a very interesting brand too! ;-)

I'm excited for the video function in this firmware.. but I'm not feeling completly safe to use it when I found that it's in an hard experimental stage and there's risk of DESTROYING THE CAMERA, :O as they said here: http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=5408.0.
Is there a real chance of overheating and frying my camera making a short video?!!

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