How does magic lantern work

Kerosene lamps were not nearly as bright, but they were so safe they could be used by children, leading to wide-spread use in churches, schools, fraternal societies, and in toy lanterns. By the turn to the 20th century, electric illumination was introduced, which spread the lantern even further.

Lanterns became ubiquitous in American culture. Several hundred companies made their own brands, often in a bewildering array of different models. One big question is whether using Magic Lantern will void the warranty of your camera. First off, if you do have any of the cameras listed above, it is quite likely that the warranty period has expired anyway.

However, should you have any problems with your camera that may be related to installing and using Magic Lantern software, it is quite possible that Canon is not going to fix it. Magic Lantern is loaded with features that are not found in the stock Canon menus.

The absence of these features in Canon cameras is, quite frankly, why Magic Lantern exists in the first place. It would be nice if Canon included some of these features, like some of the other manufacturers, but that is a topic for another article.

In their defense, however, the newer Canon models do seem to be getting more feature-rich. Although Magic Lantern was originally targeted for video shooters, there are still many great features that are useful for those of us who concentrate on still photography. Let's take a look at a few of those features here. This is one of the main reasons I wanted to give Magic Lantern a try.

I love doing time lapse photography, but it is disappointing that my Canon 5D Mark III doesn't have a built-in intervalometer. Using a cable release the last few years hasn't been a huge deal, but it's nice to not have an extra piece of gear to worry about or something else with a battery that will go dead at the worst time. Focus peaking is one of those features you just have to try to understand why it is so helpful.

For shots where critical focus is so important, this feature works great. It also makes using manual focus lenses a breeze. Just adjust the focus ring until what you want in focus is in focus, and voila! Focus peaking provides a visual indicator to let you easily see what areas are in focus. It's that simple. This goes along with using the intervalometer feature.

After shooting a sequence of images, it would be nice to have the ability to preview what the timelapse video will look like. Typically, the only way to do this is to press the image review button, then use the scroll wheel to run through the images.

With the Timelapse Play feature, it is possible to watch a preview of the video with just a couple of keystrokes. It will continuously cycle through all the images in a loop until the image review button is pressed. Although my Canon camera has Bulb mode, I would generally have to use a remote cable release to use it.

Either that or hold down the shutter button for the length of exposure I want, which doesn't work well. Magic Lantern has a built-in Bulb Timer feature that allows you to set any time from 1 second all the way up to 8 hours, in 1 second increments. With this feature enabled, you half-press the shutter button to automatically activate a 2-second timer, then the camera exposes the scene for the designated time you selected.

Pretty nifty. This is another feature that aids in achieving critical focus in a specific area of a scene. This feature allows you to select a magnification of , , or The Magic Zoom feature can be set up to function is several different ways. When activated using Live View, a focus box shows up on the LCD screen at the magnification you select. You then manually focus to achieve maximum sharpness.

The coolest thing about this feature is the visual confirmation, in the form of green bars above and below the focus box, of optimum sharpness. This is a neat little feature, even though it may not be used all that often. Instead of uploading an image to a website or computer software to find out your shutter count, it is right on the screen in the Debug menu.

Not only does it give you the total shutter actuations, but also shows how many of those were taken using Live View if that really matters. When the feature is highlighted, there is even fine print at the bottom of the interface that gives the shutter rating for my camera. The final slide was then ready to be viewed in a lantern slide projector.

Photographic lantern slides took off in the late 19th century as a popular form of entertainment, and in addition to educators, missionaries and salespeople soon began to use Magic Lantern slides to visually entice the audience while educating, spreading their messages, and peddling their wares. By the s and 40s, lantern slides dropped off in use as overhead projectors and slide projectors took their place. However, for me, lantern slides continue to hold a certain charm. I imagine the speechless awe of an audience as an image rises up the wall and shimmers there.

And I imagine a photographer, hunched over a slide with a tiny paintbrush, coloring his world beautiful, and capturing some of that magical essence between these thin sheets of glass. View the discussion thread. Produced by the Smithsonian Institution Archives.