Canon DSLR Hack Allows It To Shoot RAW Video

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @06:10PM from the features-added-by-users dept.

When the Canon 50D DSLR camera was released back in 2008, it could take nice pictures, but it had no support for video recording. Now, through an enterprising hack by members of the Magic Lantern forums, the 50D can capture RAW video. From the article: "The tech inside the 50D looks like it borrows a lot more from its higher-end siblings, like the 5D Mark II, and it’s possible we may actually get better RAW video quality out of the 50D than we do out of any of the non-CF Canon cameras. ... The camera doesn’t have playback or audio recording as it was never designed to shoot video, but this isn’t too different from the RAW recording on the other Canon DSLRs at the moment."

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Re:Now that is a kickass hack! by macraig · 2013-05-28 19:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is not like the "triple core" or "double core" CPUs being "hacked" into quad-cores when the crippling was just the setting low of a line or setting of a jumper on the chip.
I beg to differ. That is precisely what this hack resembles. Quoth the article:

The tech inside the 50D looks like it borrows a lot more from its higher-end siblings....
Translated, that means the camera already has the hardware required for the task; it simply lacked the firmware/software to implement it. The camera wasn't "crippled" per se, but the "extra core" was already there waiting to be utilized.