One of the worst things that someone can do to a photographer is mess with their camera in a way that makes it not functional. In fact, that’s what Magic Lantern apparently did as an April Fool’s Joke on its community.

Magic Lantern, which unlocked RAW video shooting on Canon DSLRs, released a new build for its community. Members downloaded it, and got the equivalent blue screen of death with a camera. For those of us that remember the DOS days of computer operating systems, we remember this all too well. Just imagine it coming up on your camera.

This forced folks to revert back to the older version and later on someone went through the code and found a section labeled as “Joke mode.” With that, folks knew that it was all just a joke.

What a scare, right? In fact, many members of the community were enraged and didn’t think that it was alright. However, all of their images were still there and no major harm was done physically to the camera. To the photographers who probably hyperventilated and had the equivalent of a meltdown, we’re not so sure.

Via Boing Boing