Developments in the field of magic lantern raw video continue to grow with news that developers have managed to get raw video support up and running on the Canon 50D, a 5 year old camera that predates the Canon 5D Mark II and which shipped without any video capability at all!
The downside to this is that it means there is no built in sound for the 50D as it was never supposed to do video in the first place! There is also no in camera video playback yet either, for the same reason, although there seems to be some progress being made on implementing this.
On the upside it records to compact flash which means that it is far more capable of recording higher resolutions than the 600D which only has a much slower SD card slot. The few who have tried it so far seem very impressed with its low light performance but a lot less with the rolling shutter issues. Initial impressions seem to suggest that the 50D gives results similar to, if not a fair bit better than, the Canon 5D Mark II. So it is seems like it will be one of the most capable cameras yet in terms of working with the magic lantern raw video feature. The Canon 5D Mark III still rules the roost for the magic lantern raw hack though of course.
The most amazing feature the Canon 50D has going for it however is the low price! It’s obviously only available on the second hand market but prices seem to hover around the £350/$500 area. Does this make it the cheapest raw video capable camera yet?
The following videos were shot by Julian Huijbregts on the 50D with Magic Lantern raw installed.
This one was shot with a Kowa 2x anamorphic lens mounted on a 50mm Nikon:
This one was shot on flat lenses at 1592x864 and upsized to 1080p