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Canon Digital Rebel Hacked Into A Pseudo-10D
Reverb9 writes "When Canon introduced the Digital Rebel, the world's first entry-level Digital SLR camera, many remarked on its similarities to the 10D , its $500 more expensive big brother. In fact, the two cameras share much of the same technology and so Canon implemented a number of software-based limitations to avoid destroying sales of the professional-oriented 10D. Now, a new hack that restores a previously hidden menu along with a few additional tricks has added nearly all of those 10D features to the Rebel, with an arguably superior user interface to boot. Canon has so far said little on the hack but certainly cannot be happy with its potential effect on sales. This is, however, a reality that more corporations are having to confront. In an era where programming labour is relatively cheap and computer connectivity more frequent can artificial, marketing-driven, barriers between technology products, last?"
picture that...
Yes, when they're enforced by the DMCA and jail sentences for those who reverse-engineer them. (Remember DeCSS? The outcry over DeCSS was just a preview; things are going to get a lot worse, not better.)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Canon has so far said little on the hack but certainly cannot be happy with its potential effect on sales.
That arguement is rediculous. What part of Canon's market that will shell out for that camera will apply this hack? Probably almost none of it, if they can find it or understand it. So that leaves the likes of the slashdot crowd, and that really isn't a big enough group to put a dent into Canon's sales.
Some of the Sony Minidisc players had features disabled through software. I, for one, was able to get many new features on mine after enering the service menu.
The Canon 10D is aimed at pros, and what pro would actually rely on a "hack" to turn their Rebel into a 10D? These guys have to be able to trust their cameras completely and having hacked firmware will degrade that trust, no matter what the 1337 h4x0r community says.
Besides, what will happen to these pros when the next Canon firmware obliterates this hack? If the firmware provides needed fixes that they can't get without losing their "Rebel/10D", they're going to be mighty unhappy.
So I doubt Canon will be too worried about this: their target audience for the 10D isn't the hack-using geekerati, it's professionals. People who rely on their cameras aren't about to compromise reliability just to save a (relatively) few $$.
Just to mention that the 10D does have different hardware, so this hack won't give all features,
notably the faster frames per second and frames that are buffered.
The EOS-300D will shoot 4 frames at 2.5 frames per second and the EOS-10D will shoot 9 frames at 3 frames per second.
Also, the EOS-300D has a cheap-feeling plastic body while the EOS-10D has a black magnesium body.
My Comcast cablebox (motoral model unknown, somewhere from c.1992) is a POS. I called Comcast for tech support because my volume was too low
Fast forward some months
This one feature was useful enough for me to keep two different codes for my one cable box on one remote.
I'm still searching for the CC button, like aztec gold.
Firmware update instructions from Canon
10D Instruction Manual (PDF file)
Latest Firmware from Wasia
(Wasia is apparently the pseudonym of the Russian hacker who has developed all these goodies.)
Wasia's site is here:
http://satinfo.narod.ru/
Some more info from the linked page:
There are a bunch of other neat tips on that site, but they aren't directly related to this story, and so I haven't re-posted them here.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
By what rationale? Neither "crippling" by the manufacturer, nor "uncrippling" by the end user should be a crime. Making either illegal is sheer idocy.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
1. Build a product out of [price] reach for most consumers;
2. Charge a more realistic price for a 'feature reduced' version;
3. Watch as it gets hacked;
4. Then watch sales climb high as people begin to believe (under false pretences) that they have got 'one over' on the company - people love a free ride or a good 'bargain'.
I like it!
You may have paid for the hardware, but the software is licensed to you. In this case, you are only allowed to use the portions of it that are openly available. That's the reason, among others, that this camera costs so much less that its bigger brother: it does less stuff. You want to do more stuff? Pay for the camera that does it.
There should be nothing preventing me from altering the software on the camera I bought. It's like telling me I can't write notes in the book I bought because it's not licensed for it. I don't agree to license the software in the camera btw, I buy the camera.
I touch computers in naughty places
No...
Many vehicles out there have the same exact engine and drivetrain, but have timing and whatnot adjusted via computer, one to give better fuel consumption, the other to givemore power.. and the manufactuere advertises one as 120HP engine, and one as 150HP. Same, exact, engine.
Also, the timing on many vehicles is adjusted for a certain low grade of fuel (Even if that low grade isn't the lowest grade available).... making the decision to ALWAYS run on a higher octane fuel, and tuning the timing to take that into account can give you a nice increase in power.
Add to that cars with servo controlled turbo wastegates (if I recall correctly).. boost pressure can also be increased (or decreased, for better fuel efficiency) on the fly.
There are numerous ways to tweak a modern computerized engine management system.
The best easter egg in a car I think is this one. Have not found the hidden launch control on my 10 year old rustbucket, though. I am taking apart the digital clock this weekend to find it.
This tale is all hearsay, and I've never confirmed it (please don't nitpick on my model numbers, but I believe it was the 8L/4L):
When HP orignally launched their Laserjet 8L, they were having trouble generating enough sales for the product. I'm not sure why, but perhaps it was because a lot of the desktop publishing market at the time belonged to Apple, who had the Laserwriter out on the market. That's neither here nor there, though.
The 8L could do, IIRC something like 10 or 11 ppm. So HP took the 8L, and through the use of a slightly different gearing, produced the 4L, which was nearly identical except for a slower print-rate, somewhere in the 5 ot 6 ppm range, which was still quite nice for the time. They sold the 4L for about half of what the 8L went for. All of a sudden, they were selling a huge amount of 4Ls, but there were also a ton of companies that realized that a 4L wouldn't be enough for their branch office, or whatever, so they purchased the "upgraded" 8L, instead. Enterprising users could, presumably, order the gear set (and whatever associated parts went with the actual 8L) and "hard mod" their 4L into an 8L.
That's funny ... I remember DeCSS. My friend had the T-shirt. I read and loved the haiku.
I also remember how thousands of hackers won out in the end, and have libdvdcss and libdvdread installed on their systems. And remember how DVD-Jon was aquitted? Twice? That was sweet.
It's too bad that the DMCA brought us all down in the end. Every day i lament the fact that I can't download pirated movies off the internet before they're released in the theatre, and that I also can't watch dvd's on my computer.
It really sucks.
Way back when, the local phone company shipped out these cheap caller ID boxes when you ordered new service. They sent the lowest end model, which only shows the name and had ~50 number memory.
:P
One day bored, I opened the box up and found that there was *1* soider point that would upgrade it to "name" caller ID, and 200+ more number memory.
The difference in price bewteen the 2 models was like $40.
Honestly, I don't think many people will do this change to upgrade there camera. Personally, I wouldn't becuase those damn things are expensive compaired to my $100 digital camera
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Spend the extra on the 10D, the metal chassis alone is worth the extra $$...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
It is an artifact of the need to standardize board layouts, processors, hardware and designs for mass production. Its also a direct tribute to the greed of companies who wouldn't offer their customers the best possible product possible.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Name one example of this. Everything I've seen that you state is in addition to several other modifications. For example, the engine in the Gen 1 and 2 DSM's (Eclipse, Talon, and Laser) may have lower boost as compared to the Euro model of that engine, but it also has smaller intake and exhaust manifolds, a smaller turbo, different fueling, etc.
The Audi S4 and RS4 have the same engine, but the turbos differ, as do the heads, exhaust and intake manifolds, the entire intake tract, intercoolers, etc. Everything appears to be the same, but it's not apparent until you start taking things apart.
We get screwed here in the US. Most foreign car manufacturers detune the cars for the US market due to emissions regulations, insurance reasons, or whatever. But that detuning rarely involves simply changing software or boost levels for turbos/superchargers. Usually, major components of the engine are "downgraded" also because they don't need to spend the extra money to support the same amount of air or fuel flow as they do on the european counterpart.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Saving $500 is quite a lot, I'll bet a number of normal people figure out how to apply this hack with detail instructions from message boards and the like.
I really thought it was odd of Canon to differentiate the software at all - they should haver just kept the price differential to a resnable cost for a sturdier body.
Both are really prosumer cameras, I think people shopping for one would be thinking about the other - like you say, the real difference is when you are going for a 1D or a 1Ds.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
just how many other devices have similar "hidden" features, just waiting to be hacked. I suspect it's a lot.
The Nissan Sentra has the same engine and frame as the more expensive 200SX, but for the life of me I can't find the software hack to change the body panels of my sentra.
From everything I've seen about the Rebel, it is a much more cheaply made piece of equipment. "As a professional" I would consider the more robust design of the 10D (which is due for a replacement/update by the way) to make it a superior camera, for reasons unrelated to the chip set and its functions. Furthermore, as a professional, I am considering the Rebel as a backup digital body, without any hacking. It just doesn't look like a good bet for a high use high reliability camera, although it has its potential uses. But even with functions hacked, it is unlikely to equal a 10d.
As for the "propriety" of crippling functionality, get a clue. The fact that a company can give something away at no cost doesn't mean that it is evil if it doesn't.
Look at it this way: The price for the low function and high function products is probably lower (over time, ceteris parabus, etc. etc.) because the development cost is amortized over a larger market which includes the low and high function products instead of just the high function products.
Of course the company could distribute the benefits of the larger manufacturing run to different market segments depending on compeitition... but somewhere, if the market is competitive, the consumer is a winner, if the company can sell more of those chips by crippling some of them.
Think about it.
I have one of those Motorola digital cable boxes. One afternoon my one-year-old nephew was crawling around and put his hand down on the remote. He apparently pushed just the right combination of buttons to access some sort of set-up menu. There was all sorts of settings that were obviously above my head, thus I was too chicken to make any changes for fear of really screwing up something, or worse. So I cancelled out of it and have yet to find out how to access it again. Makes me wonder what sort of stuff I could have tapped into had I known more about what I was doing.
Some of the stuff in this thread is just insane. And far and beyond normal idiocy.
1.Since this camera was announced we knew it would be hacked it was just a matter of time.
2.Canon knew it would be hacked.
3.If you only knew how many times products are crippled/disabled and priced lower so that high end stuff still sells? anyone remember 3.5 single sided floppies? Companies do what is in there own best interest.. err in the stockholders best interest. Do some of you really think Canon is doing this to pull one over on you? No they are doing what will make the most money for their shareholders.
4.I think the anaology to overclocking is not valid. Chips are clocked at set speeds becuase they are stable at that speed, If AMD/Intel sold the 2.4 rated chip as a 3.0 which it is in some cases IDENTICAL, people would complain since the 2.4 rated chips can't really handle those speeds and crash. AMD and Intel love overclockers cuz they buy more chips then anyone else, since they fry things all the time.
5.All in all this will not really affect 10d sales, for all the reasons listed above, stability, ability to interface with higher end equipment, better case, higher quality parts, and certain features that the 300d can't so at all.
6.300d sales will go up since this just became the geek camera of the year.
Also on a side note no one has mentioned that people have been hacking the Canon lenses to get more f-stops and zoom out of them for awhile. Canon restricts some lenses since the quality becomes adversly affected at min and max. So some people have removed the stops and taken the quality hit for more versitility.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
No, in fact, ALL of the MD recorders have features disabled through software. SCMS copy protection anyone?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Er. No.
Canon said, 'we'll give you this camera here, with magnesium body and huge feature set, for X dollars.'
Then Canon said, 'alternately we'll give you this other camera here, with plastic body, and extensive but smaller feature set, for X minus five hundred dollars.'
Canon was quite open about advertising that there were significant similarities. The sensor and a lot of the electronics are essentially the same. The more expensive camera has a more durable body, can shoot multiple frames faster, has a higher maximum shutter speed, and a few other goodies. Canon never said anything about there being entirely different firmware on the two models.
When you buy the camera, what are you paying for? The advertised set of features. What did Canon give you for your money? The advertised set of features. Why are they lying, again?
~Idarubicin
Software hacks and the price differential of a few hundred bucks are fairly irrelevant when the camera's power can really only be unleashed with pro lenses costing $1500 or $2000 (and up) rather than the cheap crap lens that comes with a stock Rebel unit. It's not uncommon for a serious photog to have tens of thousands of bucks invested in lenses. Do you really think that this sort of pro would balk at the 10D's price and get a hacked Rebel instead?
Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG) is a very good example of this, though not with S4 and RS4 as you state. Theri previous platform for middlesized cars had on engine in particular that was used in many, many cars. The 1.8 liter turbo. There was tuning from 150 hp to 190 hp, with no changes what so ever to the hardware side.
Some examples:
Audi A3 150 hp to 180 hp, depending on country of sales
Audi A4 163 hp and 190(?) hp
VW Golf GTI 150 hp
Skoda Octavia 150 hp, RS has 180 but with different hardware.
Seat Leon 150hp to 180 hp.
Seat Toledo 180 hp
And more....
The most important link is this one:
http://ravn.net/md/
But maybe you'll find these interesting too:
http://www.minidisct.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=13149
http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~bertrik/netmd/mdhack.htm l
http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t=5&start =195
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
It is not the same camera. The 300D has a plastic body shell, isn't designed to be as robust as its more expensive rival the 10D.
For serious photography the heavier weight of the 10D helps avoiding camera shake (or atleast it does for most the people I know).
Also the 10D has built in PC socket (no not a PC as in computer - its a flash connector for studio flashes), I doubt the software hack magically opens up a new socket on the side of the body
The 10D has a higher frame rate which implies a larger buffer between the CCD and the flash memory.
Okay, the differences don't add up to $500 but the targeted markets arent the same and so the price does vary.
My film based 30 doesn't have many features above the 300v if you ignore eye control but still costs 200 more - for the features I do get and the better quality build etc I think its worth it.
So in short as the cameras are different beasts for different markets why should Canon be accused of fraud....
The original post to which this is the reply is a typical
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Yeah, because I frequently need to stop bullets or pound nails and stuff with my $1000 camera.
:-)
You'll be wanting a Nikon F4 then
But seriously, when you hire a photographer, you aren't paying for someone to point the camera and press the shutter button. You're paying for someone to take the responsibility for delivering pictures. For a one-time event like a wedding, a photographer simply can't risk equipment failure. A photographer working away from civilization, such as a nature photographer or a photojournalist, simply can't risk equipment failure. That's why these people are willing to pay $5000 or more for the EOS-1D and the like.
The people buying the 10D are the ones who can't justify the cost of a 1D, but need more reliability than a consumer model can give them. Maybe they like to travel a lot for example. The people buying the 300D won't have reliability near the top of the priorities. That's not to say that the 300D is necessarily flimsy, but it's just not built to take abuse. Canon made no secret that the sensor in the 300D is exactly the same as the one in the 10D, and unlike Nikon, all EF lenses work perfectly with all EOS bodies, so image quality isn't a reason to choose between them.
Here's a film SLR with 90%. That said, the biggest difference between the 10D and 300D's viewfinder isn't coverage but magnification. With same 50mm lenses, the 10D has a .88x magnification, while the 300D has a .8x. Between the 10% magnification difference and inherently dimmer pentamirror construction, the 10D will be much easier to use.
When I'm shooting for a client, I need two things. I need a camera that won't fail, and I need a second camera. In that respect, if I had Canon lenses and my photography doesn't need the 1D/1D2's speeds or the 1Ds' resolution, the 10D/300D combination might be reasonable, if I can get over the severe difference in usability. No, it's not an "attitude" issue.
Your suggestion to get the 1Ds or the 1D Mark II are asinine, though, if they're looking at $800 and $1,000 bodies. Last I checked, the 1D Mark II costs $6,000, and the 1Ds costs $10,000, not to mention the weight increase from even 10D.
No, the skill will remain constant for a given photographer. However, with better ergonomics and specs of the 10D, you're less likely to miss shots with it than with the 300D. That's the whole point of buying say pro-grade over consumer-grade -- you're more likely to get usable results. Is that worth the price difference? I don't know. Ask your wallet.
The 10D and the 300D/Rebel have the same sensor. And the sensor is a CMOS not CCD chip.
See the review here.
Steve
Assuming they can sell the crippled item at a lower cost and still make a profit, there's no reason they couldn't sell the full-featured version at the same price and still make a profit.
Well, yes and no. Clearly Cannon can still make a per-unit profit on selling the less expensive camera, but they still have to recover their engineering costs. For cutting edge technology, those are probably non-trivial.
Cannon no doubt developed a strategy for repaying them based on selling X number of full-featured units at a high price, and Y crippled units at a low price.
The whole reason for releasing products with intentionally crippled functionality (which in the electronics world goes back at least to Intel's 486SX, and probably much further) is to minimize engineering overhead by not having to design a new product. While it seems ridiculous to us to sell a product with important features disabled, its a very natural side effect of the economies of scale that the electronics industry has created. That is, it's cheaper to make a million of the same chip, and break half of them, then to make half a million of two separate designs.
Put yet another way: You can bitch all you want, but if Cannon hadn't been able to release the crippled camera, they might not have made the thing in the first place.
Consumers are getting the shaft any time they buy these crippled products. They shouldn't HAVE to hack something to unlock built-in features.
Exactly. I had to "hack" the crippled Windows Server 2003 to accept multiple connections by telling it I had 1000 licenses in the License Manager. The product is exactly the same, but with this one little tweak I got just as much functionality as I would have with the much higher priced, 1000-CAL product.
Shouldn't I be able to buy one, non-crippled version without jumping through these hoops? It's unconsionable.
TW
> Instead should have a $200 Photoshop for everyone.
Excellent post. You really made me question some of my thinking on the subject.
Have you considered, however, that adding back all of that crippled functionality can actually be a *negative* to many consumers? I have a friend who wanted to get a Photoshop-ish paint program to do basic image editing that got no more complicated than cropping and un-red-eyeing digital photos and a little messing around with scanning. He was determined to buy something on the level of Photoshop Lite, but I installed Gimp for him since it's more or less the full Photoshop. I was showing him the zillions of features that were available when he said "What the hell is all *that* for? All I want to do is send pictures to my mother!" Ignoring the whole commercial vs. open source aspect of it, I think there's a very large group of consumers out there who really *don't* want the full versions of products. If you get out of the hacker mindset then there really *is* such a thing as too much power / too many options. By just selling one version of Photoshop / Office with every function enabled, how many sales will actually be *lost?*
Also consider the fact that enabling those few added functions are what suddenly makes a product / software package go from being a "thing to use a little around the house" to "a professional tool to use to earn a living." How much of the value of a camera or imaging software comes from what that product represents in future income to the consumer? Does that make the product worth more money? Should the added value of those few menu options be ignored since they're essentially just a switch flipped in the compiler? I think your questions about luxury and high-quality are good, but one man's "high quality" is another man's "too damned complicated!"