Will The Magic Lantern RAW Hack Void Your Warranty?

The Magic Lantern hack is a hot topic those days. Not just delivering amazing video quality on the Canon EOS 5D Mark III (price & specs), but going so far to transform a 5 year old DSLR, the EOS 50D (here on eBay), in a powerful videocamera – a camera that was never thought to be a videocamera.

But there is (obviously) one main question everyone is asking when thinking to hack their DSLR: will it void the warranty? Udi over at DIY Photography wanted to find out and wrote to Canon (and to Nikon and Panasonic). In the case of Canon, he asked if installing ML would void the warranty. Canon answered:

There is no such thing as “voiding” the Canon warranty, there are simply repairs that are covered, and those that are not.

For instance, the repairs for a failure of the buttons on the back of the camera within the warranty period, on a camera that does not show any evidence of mishandling or misuse, would likely be covered. Repairs for a camera that is “bricked” or otherwise having issues directly related to using a third party firmware would not be covered.

Even if a camera had to have the main board replaced due to it being “bricked” by a third party firmware, and then at some point later (but still within the warranty period) the buttons malfunctioned, the same rules still apply.