"If you have a point-and-click digital camera made by Canon, you may be able to turn on all sorts of features usually reserved for more expensive SLRs. That includes live histograms, depth-of-field calculation, under and overexposure highlighting, and -- best of all -- shooting your pictures in RAW. The secret is CHDK, an enhanced, free software replacement firmware."
It doesn't update your firmware, it takes over the camera when you load it. So if it doesn't work, remove the sd card, and start over (assuming you have it set to autoload).
So give it a try!
I'd do it in an instant if my camera (S1 IS) were supported, but it doesn't appear to be. But it's good to know if I end up with another Canon point and shoot. (But with a lot of good non-Canon superzoom PS's coming out within the next month including wide angle, 18x zoom and RAW, I may not buy another Canon!
That article looks amazing - I wonder if I am brave enough to try it on my wifes S3 while she is out . . ok maybe not : (
I really would be interested to hear from anyone who does try it though, it sounds almost too good to be true.
I say 'almost' because it's not uncommon to have extra features simply 'switched off' so that a piece of elcetronics fits a different consumer price brand.
I tried it on my S3, the hack seemed to work just fine, but I couldnt open the RAW files afterwards, not even after using the DNG convertor that was supposed to work with the S3 RAWs. Oh well...
I use Stepok's raw importer to enhance the raw file and convert it to a tiff. Then I open it in Photoshop and do my major editing....it makes a difference!
Working just fine on my S2 IS with 2GB SD card. I am using the Fingalo build for now. I might try another build that has ultra-high shutter speeds. That's always fun to play with.
I've got a 4GB SD as well, and I will include the necessary files on that card, but I will stick with 2GB cards for most uses since it seems that it cannot be autoloaded with 4GB cards and it's a bit annoying...
I've noticed one oddity that when switching back and forth between play and record mode, it calculates the auto white balance for the running display. I got some very heavy blue casts on my display screen. It did not seem to affect the images at all though.
Pretty cool being able to shoot RAW. The number of features available is rather mindboggling.
I'm considering using the camera to build some movies next year, so that's pretty exciting.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but since this was linked to today, and it interests me:
I once hacked my Kodak DX6440 firmware to increase the JPEG quality by reducing the constants in the JPEG quantization table in the firmware. It turns out JPEG quantization tables are fairly standard and an easy thing to detect in the binary firmware files.
It did result in larger JPEG files coming out of the camera, but the increase in overall image quality was basically imperceptible - apparently JPEG compression is among the least of a cheap P/S camera's image quality worries.
I imagine that getting RAW files from a P/S would have similar results: larger files and an unmistakable cool factor, but probably not a noticeable leap in image quality.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but since this was linked to today, and it interests me:
I once hacked my Kodak DX6440 firmware to increase the JPEG quality by reducing the constants in the JPEG quantization table in the firmware. It turns out JPEG quantization tables are fairly standard and an easy thing to detect in the binary firmware files.
It did result in larger JPEG files coming out of the camera, but the increase in overall image quality was basically imperceptible - apparently JPEG compression is among the least of a cheap P/S camera's image quality worries.
I imagine that getting RAW files from a P/S would have similar results: larger files and an unmistakable cool factor, but probably not a noticeable leap in image quality.
Interesting. So does this Canon hack unlock hidden features, or just alter the available ones? I'm confused.
My brother uses this, says it works flawlessly. It mainly unlocks features disabled by Canon to be enabled on more expensive cameras. Kinda dirty of them but eh, that's what hackers are for I guess. It doesn't work with every Canon, may void your warranty, and in rare cases may damage your focus drive. However for the most part it seems to be safe to use.
The best thing about it is unlike a lot of hacks for different products, it is temporary and starts disabled when the camera is turned on, so if it isn't compatible with the camera or something just turning it off and back on brings the camera back to normal.
I downloaded one of these for my S3, and I seem to be able to get it to load, but I can't figure out how to turn on the RAW capture feature, which is really the only thing I want to try right now ... anybody have some specific instructions or suggestions?
