Do you guys use Focus Peaking in Magic Lantern? Do you think it's accurate? I used it in the past few weddings. Now at home I checked the footage, they aren't quite well focused. I'm thinking not to use it.

You have to fidget with the different modes according to the lighting conditions for the best results. But no, it's not deadly accurate.
I hit focus much faster and more accurately than I used to without it. It's much better than nothing for me. But if you have a better option you should use that for sure.

I used to get better result by rolling the focus ring back and forth to find the mid point. Guess now with Focus Peaking, I just rely on it. But when I check the footage at home with computer, they aren't quite focus properly :/

I prefer magic zoom.

Is the Magic Zoom another feature provided by Magic Lantern? I think I will stop using Focus Peaking anymore.

Hi Taky,

Yes, Magic Zoom is part if ML. It zooms in 5x and shows that image in the corner of the screen, but the really useful part is that it works while recording. I also use peaking, but mainly use Magic Zoom. If you have both selected, while recording, push the expanded focus button and it will cycle through the Magic Zoom, peaking and then nothing. Hope that helps.

I just checked out Magic Zoom. It seems a very good solution. Will use it now instead of focus peaking. Thanks for the tips.

the problem I found with magic zoom is that you can only zoom in part of the screen

You can move the focus point around the screen. But i must admit that I find this a pain and just leave mine in the centre.

Focus Peaking in ML on the 5DM2 is off. It doesn't work. Moving the focus box for Magic Zoom on the 5D mark II is easy as it uses the joystick.

Ahh.. just found out Magic Zoom won't work on T3i crop zoom. After switching back from the crop zoom, it draws only horizontal noise on the magic zoom window :/

Someone else pointed me a bugfix to the firmware that will fix the 3x crop zoom problem. Done!

Hi Taky,

ANy chance you could share the details of that? I get the feeling I'm missing out on something here. Thanks!

I'm not sure which part you are referring to. But for T3i / 600D, after switching back from the 3x crop zoom, Focus Peaking, and Magic Zoom screen will draw noise instead.

Go to this page and download the autoexec.bin to store in the root of the SD card. It will fix the issue.

https://groups.google.com/group/ml-devel/browse_thread/thread/486d9cfdc9121ced/a68a9e5e56aa782d?show_docid=a68a9e5e56aa782d

Taky,

I wasn't sure what you meant, hence the vagueness. I was referring to the messed up on-screen noise after magic zoom when peaking is enabled, and didn't know whether it was a Canon firmware update or a new Magic Lantern one.

Thanks so much for the link, I'll try that out!

The focus peaking/screen corruption bug seems to have been fixed on my 600d. I like the ability to press Info and toggle the ML display on or off.

Monochrome display for focus checking looks useful as well, all in all a good update.

Now I just need to figure out why I can't get the intervalometer working now, but that's for another day.

Mike

Do you mind tell me a little bit more about the Monochrome display for focus checking? how to do that?

THx

Sure.... now I haven't put this to the test yet, so it remains to be seen how accurate the peaking is.

I'm really not sure if this is from the new ML update or I somehow missed it before. Pressing the "info" button on my 600d (T3i) it toggles between the Canon overlays and the Magic Lantern one. I guess it's useful if you want to just flip to ML to check focus, for example, then go back to the Canon overlays.

On the "LiveV" menu in Magic Lantern, the "Focus Peak" options accessed via the Q button has a new paramter, called "Gray". You can toggle this off or on.

On a real video camera, a mono display with colored focus peaking is a great aid to focus. It makes the peaking much easier to see than on a color display, it really jumps out at you.

Of course, this depends on the peaking being accurate, and I think you'd expressed some concerns about that in another thread. It'll need some testing to see if it is reliable, and maybe playing with the Peaking paramters a bit.

Thanks for explaining. I have been using Focus Peaking for the past few weddings. Now when I edit them I noticed they aren't accurate at all (some scene is quite off too). I don't have issue seeing those color dots.

For those weddings I did without focus peaking, I have better focusing result by nudging the focus wheel back and forth to determine the mid point.

Now with the 600D / t3i crop zoom display fixed, I think setting Magic zoom to

- Always On
- Small Size
- 1:1 display
- SW corner

That will assist me better in manual focusing with the Magic Zoom windows always on without interfering screen composition.