Canon EOS-M Has Been Hacked, Magic Lantern Alpha 3 for the 5D Mark III is Out

The team over at Magic Lantern continues to make things happen. The camera has barely been released and they've already gotten inside the firmware for the Canon EOS-M mirrorless camera (which shares a similar sensor with the Canon T4i). A firmware update is still a little ways off, but it's another good sign that most (if not all) Canon cameras can be hacked with a little bit of work. Also of note, Magic Lantern has released the 3rd Alpha for the 5D Mark III, which addresses a few issues from the last Alpha.

Here's what the guys had to say about the current state the hack for the camera:

With a little guesswork, we were lucky to notice that on the inside, the little EOS-M is very similar to the 5D Mark III. So, with a few tricks we were able to dump the firmware and print the familiar "Hello World" message – the proof that Magic Lantern will work on the EOS-M...

Follow the porting thread in the forum and stay tuned - you can expect an alpha version during the next weeks.

They also released Alpha 3 for the 5D Mark III, here's a little bit about the release, from a1ex in the forum:

The most important change is a card test executed at startup. My 16GB (Kingston 266x) card has problems, and I'm trying to diagnose the issue: maybe it's just my card, or maybe it's related to this. If the test fails on your camera, please report.

There are also a few handy tweaks:
- Histogram and waveform moved to bottom
- New experimental display for focus peaking (extreme sharpness)
- 16:9 bars for anamorphic preview
- Focus box moves faster (not yet customizable)
- After taking a picture and pressing Zoom In right away, you can scroll through pictures
- Saturation boost when adjusting white balance
- Warnings for bad settings (e.g. if you set picture quality to JPEG instead of RAW by mistake)
- Dim the red LED while recording (make it less distracting)

He also mentions that the Alphas are pretty safe, so that means at the very least you shouldn't experience any catastrophic issues. At the moment the rest of the photo features from Magic Lantern have not been ported over because the camera is experiencing some issues when a random stability test is run. There is no timetable for the next update to add the missing features (or even enable new ones), so for now you'll just have to be satisfied with the great work the team has already done.

Head on over to the Magic Lantern site if you've got a 5D Mark III and you'd like to get in on the action.

Links:

• Magic Lantern for 5D Mark III -- Magic Lantern Forum
• EOS-M says Hello World, Magic Lantern will run -- Magic Lantern