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Hacking Canon Point-and-Shoot Cameras
Pig Hogger writes "If you're stuck with a cheap Canon point-and-shoot camera and have feature envy over the neighbor's sophisticated latest model, fret not! According to this LifeHacker article, the CHDK project allows nearly complete programmatic control of cheap Canon point-and-shoot cameras, enabling users to add features, up to and including games and BASIC scripting."
Canon hacking has hit mainstream, it seems... with extra visibility I'm sure the higher ups in the company will soon know about them (no doubt the engineers already knew about the project). I LOVE my Canon cameras, so, I really hope Canon doesn't pull an Apple or a Creative and start intentionally guarding against firmware hacks because then my future purchases will have to go elsewhere.
Sidenote: I had an old A80 camera that's maybe 6 years old stopped taking pictures. Turns out there was an old technical bulletin about it in their KB and that Canon was offering free repairs to any affected unit regardless of its age. I sent it in and they did what they promised AND the turnaround was around a week.
More Twoson than Cupertino
While games are a nice gimmick that gets the project attention, it looks like there are real features here. Me, after I lost my old Powershot I bought in 2004, I got a new Powershot A550. I was unhappy, however, to see that it had even less features than the old Powershot. Instead of trickling whizbang features down into cheaper cameras over time, Canon has been getting rid of them altogether. Now, one missing feature is hardware, the swivel viewfinder, and I can't do anything to remedy that. Similarly, I cannot use the camera as a webcam with a few hacks like I could the old one. However, this open firmware project will restore my precious RAW capabilities. It will also give me longer exposure times that I've long craved.
If it's anything like the 300D versus the 350D, they'll notice that people are hacking features back into the camera, and enable them by default on the newer model.
(Is there any alternative firmware for the 350D onwards, or have the hackers simply not bothered?)
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Taking RAW images with my camera was akin to storing 1 MB JPEG image into 3 MB RAW format.
Uh, How about the fact that there are no JPEG compression artifacts on a RAW image?
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Even with the clearer guide from lifehacker, this still leaves a few issues open:
(i) its a HACK and if Canon smell it, bang goes thy warranty;
(ii) CHDK are from/in Russia - genius programmers, but nationally a poor track record on the TRUST aspect.
The first one is addressed right here on the site. And sorry, but I can't help you with your xenophobia.
I've used CHDK on my A710IS for about six months with zero problems. As many others have mentioned, it's incredibly easy to disable it, but the features that it adds are very handy.
This guy's the limit!