The Null Device

Some enterprising hackers have reverse-engineered the firmware on a range of Canon digital cameras (based on the DiGIC II chip) and written their own firmware enhancement. Named CHDK, it offers features including RAW images (disabled in non-professional models), live histograms, depth-of-field calculations and a scripting language (based on BASIC, though we can't have everything) that can be used for automating your camera. There are some sample scripts here, which do things from setting bracketing to specialised modes for unusual photographic conditions to automating HDR photography.

What's more, the replacement isn't a new firmware per se, but rather a patch which boots from the memory card and runs from the camera's RAM (apparently making use of the original firmware's functions), so you won't brick your camera.

I wonder, though, what the performance tradeoffs of using it is; I don't imagine that compact cameras would have large amounts of RAM to spare that can be loaded up with third-party software that they were never intended to run in production.

(via Boing Boing Gadgets, Engadget) ¶ cameras canon chdk digic ii hacks [no comments]

Canon have just announced the PowerShot G7. The latest in Canon's top-end "G" series of compact cameras, the G7 is smaller than its predecessors (it's about the size of an A-series camera), features 10 megapixels, gyroscopic image stabilisation, sensitivity up to ISO 1600, and a new DIGIC III image processor. Gone, however, are the fold-out LCD screen (which was convenient for shooting over crowds, for example), and the RAW mode (which, presumably, is for DSLRs only these days).

Given its small size, I have some doubts over the image quality, in particular the dynamic range. I have a PowerShot A620, and have found that, when shooting images with ranges of colour, often the image quality is flat and washed-out, in a way that it wasn't with my old PowerShot G2. If this is due to the physical constraints of the sensor size, then unless Canon have since had a breakthrough in sensor engineering, it is unlikely that the new top-of-the-range G series will deliver any better performance than a humble A. I'd have to see results before I'm convinced that the G7 is a worthy successor to earlier G cameras.

Having said that, it sounds like a very good camera for shooting at gigs and such, having both IS and ISO 1600 (and the whole thing costing less than half the price of a good IS zoom lens for a DSLR.

(via Gizmodo) ¶ cameras canon photography powershot tech [no comments]