Archive for November, 2008
Canon CHDK
CHDK
What is it? CHDK is a fantastic piece of free software that unlocks a number of advanced features in some Canon point and shoot cameras.
Not really a true “hack” in the sense of the word. There is no permanent change to your camera. The firmware inside remains untouched. So if you put in a different memory card, or switch the little plastic switch on your sd card to “unlock”. and everything goes back to the way it was.
What you get for the hassle (Pros):
RAW files !
multi-bracket exposure – your cameras continous mode will now shoot 1 normal exposure, +1 over, and +1 under exposure, rather than just multiple shots of the same thing with the same exposure. Great for HDRI !
manual shutter control – , if you try shooting out the window of car with auto, it will expose for the scene. so on a bright summer day, it might do f11 and an exposure of 250th of a second, the problem is that you are moving 60 miles an hour, so everything is blurry. You need to be able to force the shutter to 2500th, and the exposure to f2.8.
Zebra view – Shows you in the viewfinder what areas are clipping in the whites. Why is this not the default on all Canon cameras?
Cons:
Doesn’t always save a raw file, sometimes it only saves the jpg. There is no warning about this, you get home and download the card, and notice some raw files are missing.
File dates get messed up, about 10% of the pictures on any given day will be marked 1/1/2000 as the file date
sometimes freezes with half trigger push
sometime screen draw does not draw menus
Saves weird crw files that nothing can read. All RAW files need to be converted from crw to dng files before Photoshop will open them.
Supposed to be able to set the shutter up to 10,000 of a second. I could never get mine over 1/1600, no matter what the menu was set to. Maybe its my camera? Need to investigate further.
Can not autoboot on an SDHC card – CHDK needs a fat16 file system, which you won’t get on a large 8gb card. This effectively limits you to 2gb cards only. But 2gb cards are so cheap these days its a minor point.
And remember , No matter what, your point-and-shoot still has only one lens.
Considering the cost was $0, and the risk is zero, there’s really no reason not to give it a try.
I never could have gotten these pics without manual control:
