What it looks like at Jonny's end! Where is the "Add Manual Controls & Extra Frame rates button"?

When I first got wind of this, I was very, very interested! I’d always thought that surely as soon as the Canon 5D MKII Firmware Update that gave the user manual control over ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed came out, somebody would take up the reins and find a way to port that over to it’s baby brother the Canon 500D. It never happened. I guess by the time the Canon 7D came around, most people had seemed to forget about the fantastic little 500D.

Canon seemed to have forgotten about it, no firmware update with manual controls ever came and now with the release of the 550D, which has all that we wanted in the 500D and more, it seems it’s slipped totally from the program.

Enter Jonny Petts. A likeable lad from Kent in the UK. He’s a friend on Facebook and when I saw his status update that he was beginning work on a 500D Firmware Hack, naturally I thought I should suss it out and see just what was going on. I built this site around videos I shot on the 500D and there’s still alot of people out there who would jump at the opportunity to have manual control of their settings and shoot at different frame rates with this little gem, so good on Jonny eh? Three cheers!

So after having a bit of chat with Mr. Petts, here’s the deal, I’ve included the whole thing here because, quite frankly I understand about 16% of what he’s saying!

Ok, well i have a firmware from the 500d and the 550d. I am also comparing what Magic Lantern has done with the new 5D MK II firmware update to the new 5D MKII to see if I can see what they have done.

But what I am ultimately trying to do is use dissect_fw3_2 to expand the firmware into flasher/firmware then to reverse the flasher (after loading it into IDA to find out how to decrypt the firmware image). After I have done all of this, I will be able to attempt porting the desired functionality into the 500D firmware from the 550D’s firmware.

This is going to be a long and painful process and could mess up the 500d, but I am willing to do it for the sake of others, as it will benefit all of the 500D users out there and could save some people $200 instead of buying a 550D.

Did you get that?! You’d be forgiven if you didn’t get it all! So here’s the scooop. . .

Jonny’s first objective is the revered 24P. Many 500D users (myself included) have found dinky workarounds for the manual controls, but are still horribly crippled by that awful 30P and the useless 20P in 1080 mode! I believe he is also looking to implement the 60P and 25P functionality as well. No word on 50P, but we’ll see how that develops, I’m sure if it’s possible we’ll hear about it.

Next up is the manual controls, obviously the new 550D has full manual control over the Shutter, ISO and Aperture. It was such a pain shooting video with the 500D, this would really be a godsend!

Since the 500D doesn’t have a microphone input, the disabling of the AGC is not such a huge issue, but I think that Jonny plans to contact Trammel Hudson (Author of the 5DMKII Magic Lantern firmware) to get his take on things. I’d be interested to know whether people see this as an important thing considering they can’t connect external mics.

I’ll be following Jonny’s progress very closely here, so if you’re interested, stay tuned. If you have anything to add or know a thing or two about hacking the firmware on Canon camera’s and would like to get in contact with Jonny, leave a comment here and I’ll make sure he gets it! Wish him luck guys! I would have loved this to happen when I had one of these camera’s and I can’t wait to see how it goes!

Jonny would like to give a big shoutout to the Cinema5D Forum users. Apparently they’ve been instrumental in getting this project up and running. Smiles all round!

More soon. . .

**UPDATE** Want to catch the first update on Jonny’s progress? Here it is!

I went on a similar shoot in Fiji at the end of last year with the same crew, for the same client, that literally ended in disaster – cyclonic weather, insane flooding, closed airports, trapped tourists and. . . .dwindling food and beer supplies. That last one nearly caused riots. Hell hath no fury like trapped Aussie’s without the life giving amber liquid!

But I digress, we’re taking a bunch of gear. . .The EX1, the 5D MKII, Lights, Flashes, Matteboxes, Lenses, Filters, Underwater housings. . .pretty much everything we could ever possibly need. Since I doubt very much that finding a Multi-Coated Hoya 77mm polariser would be so easy in the Hotel convenience store, it’s all coming.

Anyway most of the stuff we’re going to be shooting will be uploaded everyday to our clients site, but I’ll be posting some behind the scenes stuff here. Mostly photo’s that I can quickly snap off in between takes with whatever camera is available at the time.

I’ll try to get something up everyday, but knowing how much work will be required over there, forgive me if I drop the ball on a day or two. . .

Oh, just pre-ordered my 7D too. . . .Now all I have to do is survive the excruciatingly long wait without going insane! Wish me luck. . .

More soon!