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Magic Lantern’s April Fool’s Joke Crashed Lots of Canon DSLRs

Chris Gampat
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04/15/2015
1 Min read

Last Updated on 04/15/2015 by Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Product photos Canon 5D Mk III (4 of 10)ISO 200

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

April Fool's joke mode magic lantern RAW video
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.