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Olympus hacks
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  • It might also have been a testing of a new camera with a new sensor and video capabilities. Just prototypes made in EM1 body solely for testing purpose.

  • Nabil Fathi's twitter did offer some interesting info:

    Does those codes really exist on the official firmware?

    And this one for the sensor of e-m1:

    At least we know that E-M1 sensor is capable of 4K, I think this is the same sensor for GH-4.

    Any chance for a hack? ;)

  • This guy Nabil is ranting about it for days - but never supplied the firmware that he says that he possesses. Traffic increasing...

    And that the E-M1 sensor supports 4k is a long known thing - but the camera might be designed to handle the load. The RX10 sensor supports 4k (the FZ1000 proved it) but Sony did not implemented it in the last firmware upgrade.

    But talks about this firmware with 4k are coming from multiple fronts. I guess that Olympus really tested the option, but encontered issues witht he current E-M1 hardware.

  • I'm so fed up with Olympus. The requests for 25 fps video have been posted here more then two years ago. Nothing happened ever since. Not a single engineer or marketeer in Japan seems to be listening to customers demands.

    I've now invited programmers, hackers and the like to do it as a paid job. http://www.getacoder.com/projects/modify_olympus_camera_firmware_165828.html

    I'll let you guys know when it's done.

  • Yeah and focus peaking is in E-M5 firmware in "deactivated" mode. Would guess it would be relatively easy to just enable it? But because it never happened, it probably never will.

  • this guy posts some new tweets , would be interesting if he really has a beta firmware and vitaliy could look at it.. I´m sure everybody would donate for new em-1 :)

    https://twitter.com/nabilfathi15

  • I'm pretty miffed at Nabil Fathi, if he had anything then he proved to be a bit unstable with his rants on twitter, if he ever had been involved in any testing then he never will be again, basically no company would trust him. on the other hand he may have been behind a very elaborate scam fooling some well know bloggers along the way, he provided nothing, other than a lot of traffic on his BS site which shows nothing to shout about. I wish it was true, I kept my peace for as long as I can, but that sort of thing should be dealt with in our community. Like most people here who may have contacted Oly and talked to them, they really seem not to have any interest in video and firmly believe it's Pana's domain, a lot of interconnected business interests and that's how business rolls

  • @Kuban I agree that Nabil is a bit of a loose canon, but to his defence I would say that he does seem to have some engineering-level contacts within Olympus. He provided photographic proof of a beta-test that has been done with the 4K firmware, in which he apparently participated. He also knew an undocumented workaround to update a camera firmware without using a PC and shared that with the community (on the Lightsnow blog). I know that he's now working with Lightsnow on custom firmwares. So give him some credit and trust. Who knows what will happen.

  • Invaders; the guy has not delivered on anything he said, the image was released via 43rumours and Oly insist the EM1 is not built for 4K, I would be happy with normal 24/25/30 frame rates and a much better codec, that whole 120/240 fps was first relaised in the EM5 firmware at the very top of this topic thread years ago, but it hasn't been cracked. We have seen these binary numbers in all OMD firmware. He said he will release it into the wild and he hasn't. and I took his word for it.

  • @invaders, I have also contaced Lightsnow, and he confirmed that the code exists partly and he is now working with Nabil to mod it, so let us be patient and wish them luck.

  • Invades Cdpango and crew, I would not hold my breath, logic tells me nothing much will happen on the NABIL hack front, he has deleted all his tweets on EM1 4k firmware and his irresponsible rants and threats, it seems was all an elaborate hoax. Just so you know. Don't be taken for a ride.

  • Guys! He (Nabil) is not a fool. Olympus is the one to blame. The E-M1 is capable of 4k for sure and Olympus tested it. There are many different information out there, because Olympus tested this on different and also modified E-M1 versions. Some have a heating problem, some don't ( as far as I know). The mess of different information produced a lot of false positives. Also Olympus made some pressure.

    We are making progress! Some modifications are easier than I thought some very difficult. A major problem is that we can't disassemble the firmware as normal. The mn103 processor is still used, but there are so many different versions of that panasonic cpu... Also Olympus changed some part of their firmware for the E-M1 2.0 version. We had to write/modify our own extraction tool.


    My blog: http://lightsnowdev.blogspot.com/

  • Congrats to XThunder and Nabil for developing the first custom EM-1 firmware with new features.

    http://lightsnowdev.blogspot.com/2014/08/olympus-om-d-e-m1-custom-firmware.html

    What a great piece of work. I hope 25p will become a reality as hacking continues.

    Please make a donation to these guys!

  • @invaders

    My understanding it existed for the time already with just text of button changed.

    1. The Auto Focus in videos should be smoother.
    2. Full Sensor read in video mode. No crop.
    3. Better ISO performance in low light video situations
    4. More Dynamic Range in video

    This list is strange as it requires very big rewrites and advanced knowledge (if this can be done at all).

  • @vitaly

    Maybe it's time you put in some effort and offer your knowledge instead of discrediting the work of these guys.

  • Maybe it's time you put in some effort and offer your knowledge instead of discrediting the work of these guys.

    Where do you see me "discrediting the work of these guys"?

    Instead I fully support anyone. I just pointed that list does not match with their current achievements and usual things that you can do with firmware.

  • Very interested to see some test reports!

  • Well test it for yourself, before you judge it. Since I don't have an E-M1 I'm only the developer.

  • @XThunder: you have my support, respect and gratitude. Thanks for taking this on. Looking forward to seeing what comes of it. I'll buy be buying an EM1 and donating once there's 24p 4K support.

  • All gone quite here, and I hate to say it but I told you so.

  • @kuban You have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. Stay tuned...

  • cool. I'll quote you on that

  • XThunder, now things are clearer, how do you feel about what happened over the last few weeks, and how the whole donation thing has been thrown at you?

  • @invaders and Kuban: Any news on the OM-D hack? I donated to XThunder because of this thread and his page. Don't know if this was a good decision. On his page he announced an update for yesterday. Nothing happened.

    @invaders: Any news from your getacoder.com action?

  • I would say forget all this, Nabil has been very erratic in his responses to criticism and no one has been able to replicate his claimed hacked video, Thunder is in a pickle as he is creating firmware for a camera he has no access to, so use logic and forget the whole thing.