29Nov Magic Lantern 2.3 battery grip testing
I’ve been spending a bit of time with the Canon 7d running the Magic Lantern Alpha firmware update and so far it’s been working pretty well. I know that many people have reported issues running Magic Lantern firmware when using a battery grip, so over the past few weeks I’ve been testing it on both the Canon 7d as well as the Canon t2i to see how many issues I run into.
Basically I’ve been testing Magic Lantern 2.3 on both of my t2i bodies to make sure things are stable before I start taking it out into the field. Over the past few weeks I’ve made it a point to use both the Canon 7d and t2i with battery grips attached while running Magic Lantern to see how many issues I run into. I wasn’t sure if I would get errors and dropouts with 2.3 and the alpha firmware during the testing process, so far things have been running smoothly. Some older versions of Magic Lantern gave me odd problems on the t2i when using a battery grip. Most of the time this would just cause the camera to lock up and I’d have to remove the batteries to get things to reset. Not a horrible problem but on some jobs it was enough for me to consider not using battery grips to avoid the hassle.
I’ve shot almost 14 hours worth of footage over the past few weeks while testing both of these cameras. I even spent some time shooting a number of time lapse sequences including last nights lunar eclipse. So far I’ve had one recording error on the Canon t2i, but I’m not sure if this was caused by the memory card I was using or a problem introduced by the battery grip. Surprisingly I have yet to run into any problems on the Canon 7d.
The battery grip on the Canon t2i makes it so much easier to change out batteries when you have the camera mounted to a rig. It also gives you that extra run time and provides extended power for longer time lapse projects. Whenever possible I try to use battery grips to avoid the constant battery change outs and avoid the hassle of having to remove the t2i from a rig. I’ve considered moving to a Tekkeon Battery setup
I was wondering if any of you have run into problems while using a battery grip when running Magic Lantern 2.3. Where you able to confirm that it actually was the battery grip causing the problem or was the error somewhat random? I just want to make sure I’ve found any errors I need to watch out for, before I take it out for real work. If I run into any problems I’ll let you know.
November 29th, 2012 at 10:54 pm
Funny, I had some of the same issues. Never would have thought to attribute it to my grip. I’ve used Transcend cards for years and thought they were the culprit when using ML (they never caused issues in standard use). I might have to reinstall ML on one of my cards and give it another whirl. Almost bought a Sandisk UHS-1 just for ML, but the speed issues still never made sense (I was desperate!)
November 30th, 2012 at 3:34 am
Hi!
I’ve been using a no-name 600D (t3i) grip and ML 2.3 for quite some time now and the only issues I experienced, stability-wise, were related to swapping lenses out with the camera on (something one shouldn’t do anyway, I guess!). Occasionally, when changing between my 50mm 1.4 and my kit 18-55 IS II, it would lock up and battery removal would be the only solution. Other than that, no problems at all.
best wishes,
Mike
November 30th, 2012 at 5:21 am
No problems associated with battery grip (Opteka) here with a canon t3i and ML 2.3. Sometimes, once a month or something like that, get a record stop, but with ML autorestart activated no problem.
Kelvin, speed issues on USH-1 cards?
November 30th, 2012 at 5:42 am
Hey deejay,
Have you tried magic lantern alpha iii for your 5D mark iii?
Been using it for a while and it works quite well.
Gradual exposure is really neat and lets you smoothly change iso while recording.
November 30th, 2012 at 6:54 am
I should have been paying a little more attention. I didn’t realize the 3rd Alpha release was out. I’ll have to check that out, thanks for the heads up.
November 30th, 2012 at 11:34 am
You really should. With the mark III’s dual card setup – you can use an SD card for magic lantern and a CF card for recording all your clips.
I’d love to hear your take on it.
January 5th, 2013 at 10:44 am
Deejay, I’ve been using ML 2.3 as well as older version on my T2i and never encountered any problems with my opteka battery grip. I’ve shot a wedding and other videos and as I mentioned no problems to date.
David A
January 5th, 2013 at 8:22 pm
Things have been pretty smooth on ML 2.3, thanks for the input.