Supercharge Your Camera with Open-Source CHDK Firmware

Digital cameras have powers beyond what is immediately available to the user. On a standard Canon, for example, the fastest shutter speed option offered is 1/1,600 second, but the hardware can handle much more than that -- up to 1/60,000 of a second.

CHDK, the Canon Hacker's Development Kit, is an open-source software project that can be loaded on cameras using Canon's DIGIC II or DIGIC III firmware platforms. It unleashes new features including RAW file format, live histogram display, a battery readout, and the ability to run scripted actions on a camera.

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Supercharge ... K_Firmware

That's awesome. I'm sure someone will modify the software for Canon SLRs at some point.

Sounds good, but will it damage the camera's software, void a warranty, or anything that can be harmful to the camera?

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Originally Posted by G-BOAD

Sounds good, but will it damage the camera's software, void a warranty, or anything that can be harmful to the camera?

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Yes it will void the warranty. If your going to overide the default software wait until the warranty is expired.

I played with this briefly when I had a Canon S3...you don't have to actually overwrite your camera's firmware. You just install it on an SD card and set the camera to boot from it by using some trick described on that website. If you put in another SD card, the CHDK software goes away.

That said, I never found anything it did to be particularly cool...it won't stop your camera from taking noisy pictures at ISO 100, the cameras have a live histogram by default (although the CHDK one is RGB), and I could never figure out how to get the "scripted actions" to work.