Turn Your Canon Point-and-Shoot Into a Super-Camera

[Tim Williamson]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://lifehacker.com/387380/turn-your-point+and+shoot-into-a-super+camera' target='_blank'>http://lifehacker.com/387380/turn-y...-a-super+camera</a><br /><br /></div><em>&quot;If you're using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you've got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box. With the help of a free, open source project called CHDK, you can get features like RAW shooting mode, live RGB histograms, motion-detection, time-lapse, and even games on your existing camera. Let's transform your point-and-shoot into a super camera just by adding a little special sauce to its firmware.</em>&quot;<br /><br /><img alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1210575427.usr209.jpg" /><br /><br />Ever since I bought a Canon PowerShot SD870 IS, I've been a little disappointed that Canon didn't offer &quot;advanced&quot; features such as the ability to manually set the aperture and shutter speed (you'd think a $300 camera would have these features). But it looks like my disappointment can finally come to an end now that I've discovered CHDK! CHDK (which stands for Canon Hacker's Development Kit) adds manual aperture and shutter speed settings, plus about a thousand (not really) other features. Plus for those of you worried about messing up your factory ROM, don't worry about it, CHDK doesn't overwrite your current firmware. It loads onto a memory card and you choose when to activate it. So what are you waiting for? Unlock the full potential of your Canon P&amp;S! Let us know how it works out for you.

[yslee]

Nice. I recall it first started with hacking the EOS 300D. Glad to see them still at it.

ZOMG RAW FORMAT ON A COMPACT!

And the ability to add motion sensing capabilities for lightning strikes is very very neat. Those dedicated lightning triggers are really expensive...

[jaxim]

thanks for the tip! I'll definitely be looking into this for my canon camera.

[rzanology]

odly enough there is no support for the sd970 :(

[Tim Williamson]

I just installed this on my SD870 IS, it's pretty cool, adds a ton of functionality (a lot of the options I don't understand yet). It was a little bit of a pain getting it to work since to get it to work with the SD870 I had to do some hex editing (all the instructions are on the CHDK site though).

The one bug I (and others) have, is the menu kind of disappears as reappears as you're scrolling through the list. It's kind of annoying, but it's still usable nonetheless. One workaround for this bug is to go into "Review Mode" then bring up the menu, this prevents the menu from flickering.

I'll have to play with it more to see if it's something I'll keep loaded.