As we keep saying, the fanatics (and I say in the kindest form of flattery) at Magic Lantern are working on a possibility – writing straight to SSD via the CF card interface… they haven't made it work yet, but it is something that could be possible.

It also takes things beyond just the firmware hack of Magic Lantern into an additional hardware hack – which could potentially make things even more risky… maybe there's a bigger chance of doing damage to your camera?

Here's the Magic Lantern thread where they're discussing it! The images below are from Schweinert.com

After searching for days I’ve found a promising adapter (pdf datasheet FB4658 VER:1.1) that could work with a special SSD that has an IDE/ATA port already integrated. This adapter is sold in germany through the company ES&S Solutions GmbH. I’ve asked them already and Im waiting for a response. The SSD is an OWC Legacy Pro SSD 2.5“ IDE/ATA and they claim on their page it’s very fast with Read: 285 MB/s / Write: 275MB/s. It is available in sizes from 60GB – 480GB. In theory this would be fantastic because the CF controller inside the 5D Mark III maxes out at 167 MB/s and this will be sufficient to capture the RAW video data even at higher resolutions than FullHD. I still don’t know if this whole concept will work and also if the adapter pins support UDMA. These CF to IDE adapters are used in embedded PC systems. So if someone has such an adapter please try it out and let me know. Btw. this IDE/ATA SSD needs of course external power.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III RAW video to SSD

Note, here's an image of what they're working on… (again from Schweinert.com)

Canon EOS 5D Mark III can record super high quality 14bit RAW video! This is so AMAZING! I can’t believe it. I knew it all the time that Canon, Sony, Panasonic and other companies are playing games on us by crippling their products intentionally to gain more profit. Now that Magic Lantern team made the impossible possible (Thank you guys! You’re amazing!) getting super high quality RAW Video from a Canon 5D Mark III we need to find a way to store that huge amount of data. It works with 1000x CF cards but there are still dropouts. Trying to store the data directly to an OWC Mercury SSD bypassing the CF card. When faster cards are available this bulky setup will be obsolete anyway. Still not done yet. — UPDATE —

Need more info about the electronics in this camera. Please contact me if you have the Canon 5D Mark III Service Manual

What do you think?

We've got a new Magic Lantern forum section – check it out and comment away and be entered to win that Canon EOS 6D!

The past 2+ weeks have been pretty amazing! Just look at this coverage we've had!

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(cover photo credit: snap from the working project)