Hacked Nikon Firmware Allows Manual Control With D5100 While In Liveview

While the NikonHacker firmware is light years behind its MagicLantern Canon sister, it is slowly making its paces.

The latest release from NH includes some pretty happy news for Nikon D5100 users – the ability to shoot manual while in live view mode. NH tells that the feature was there all along, only it was disabled in software and needed a small technical tap to be unlocked.

Here is a short explanation coming from coderat, a member of NH forums, suggesting that mode D7000 features can be brought into the D5100 (bold by me):

“I guess the reason is pretty obvious: D5100 and D7000 firmwares are built from same source code. So most things from D7000 are inside D5100, perhaps all (I expect also DOF-preview function be there, but no button to activate). Because we see for example everywhere in a cycle work with SDHC Channel 0 and Channel 1 in D5100, but only channel 0 is enabled. Same sensor, same TX chip, and it is much easier to keep firmware almost same because you save a lot of time for development and testing.“

This makes the D5100 the most patched camera from NH with features including:

• Remove Time Based Video Restrictions
• NEF Compression Off
• NEF Compression Lossless
• Remove NEF Nikon Star Eater, for Astro folks
• Jpeg Compression – Quality (vs. Space)
• Non-brand Battery
• Live View Manual Control ISO/Shutter

Of course, Nikon does not officially support those hacks and you run them at your own risk.

[D5100 Manual Control In Liveview]