As anyone who has lusted over the technical specifications for Canon’s new knows, the capabilities of the average point and shoot camera are severely limited. Using the, the features of Canon point and shoot cameras can be significantly expanded, allowing for ultra-high speed photography, very long exposures, time lapse photography, and RAW capture. This How-To provides a guide to our experiences using the CHDK firmware, and shows just how easy it is to get more out of a point and shoot than ever thought possible.Installing CHDKThe first step is to install the CHDK software. Our friends at Lifehacker, so we won’t bother repeating the instructions.

Kodak's W1020 digital photo frame stands out thanks to its image quality. At a 16:9 ratio, produced very good color accuracy in our tests. A firmware update before using the streaming features (Kodak's Web. Not be able to watch a video created using video editing software. Try Macworld Risk-Free.

Be sure to install the Allbest build, it has all of the nice features.After installing, you’ll want to have the firmware autoload when you boot up your camera. To do so, open up the main CHDK menu by pressing your ALT button, then the MENU button. Scroll down to “Debug parameters”, then click on “Make card bootable” After it is done, turn off your camera, remove the SD card, and toggle the write protect switch. When this switch is toggled, the camera will automatically boot into CHDK (you’ll still be writing to it). Taking long exposuresLong exposure photography is appreciated for its soft, sometimes surreal images of (usually) night scenes.

Many point and shoot cameras only allow exposures of 15 seconds, but with CHDK, you can take photos at up to 64 seconds.Navigate to CHDK’s main menu and find Extra Photo Operations. In Extra Photo Operations, change the Override Shutter Speed value to the shutter speed you wish to shoot at, such as 64 seconds. Scroll down and change the Value Factor from OFF to 1.Though the camera will not indicate the modified shutter speed, the changes will take place. Just take a picture as you normally would. Be sure to have your camera set to manual mode. Taking photos of moving things works best for long exposures: try subjects like the ocean, windy trees, and traffic. Additionally, using, you can even take long exposures in the day time!

Taking ultra-fast exposuresJust as you can override the shutter speed for long exposures, you can take ultra-fast exposures as well, at up to 1/100,000 of a second with some cameras. Flash will sync at up to 1/60,000 of a second, and you’ll need flash with such short exposures. We were unsure how useful or easy this would be to use, but the results surprised us: in just a few minutes we were able to capture nice looking water droplets, without a hint of motion blur.Navigate to CHDK’s main menu and find Extra Photo Operations.

In Extra Photo Operations, change the Override Shutter Speed value to the shutter speed you wish to shoot at, such as 1/16,000 of a second. Scroll down and change the Value Factor from OFF to 1. Be sure to have your camera set to manual mode.Note that the minimum shutter speed is restricted by the aperture value you have selected in the camera’s manual settings. The wide end (lower numbers), can usually only shoot at down to 1/8000 of a second, while the narrower end (higher numbers) can shoot for the full range.Prefocus before taking the picture, either by using manual focus mode, or by holding the shutter button halfway down.

Though the camera will not indicate the modified shutter speed, it will use the short shutter speed. There are many different things that can be done with high speed photography: capture water droplets, capture explosions, or even capture a bullet leaving a gun. All of these are possible with CHDK. Running scriptsThe real power in CHDK comes from running user made scripts.

The first script we will look at is an intervalometer, which allows you to take many photos over a period of time. We used it to easily create a time-lapse video.Copy and paste into a new document, and save as ultintrvl.bas to your computer.

Then, plug in your camera’s SD card, and copy ultintrvl.bas to /CHDK/SCRIPTS/.To use the intervalometer, navigate to the main CHDK menu, find “Scripting parameters”, and click “Load script from file”. Find ultintrvl.bas, and press set. Then, scroll down and adjust the script parameters: the delay until the first shot is taken, the number of shots you wish to take, the interval between each shot, and whether or not you want it to take an “endless” number of photos. Then, exit the menu, but leave your camera in ALT mode, and press the shutter button to start the script.The video above was created by taking approximately 700 shots at 15 second intervals over 2 hours and 45 minutes. Just set your camera on a tripod or another steady surface, and start the intervalometer. Using QuickTime Pro, go to FileOpen Image Sequence to convert the hundreds of separate images into a movie.

For space and processing considerations, we recommend setting your camera to a low-resolution mode before starting the intervalometer. Exposure bracketingExposure bracketing allows you to take many pictures at slightly different exposures nearly simultaneously. You can use this to correct errors in the camera’s autoexposure, or merge exposures for. Many higher end Canon PowerShot’s have exposure bracketing built in, but for those that don’t, CHDK has the answer.Like with the intervalometer script, simply copy and paste script into a new text file. Name it bracketing.bas, and place it in the /CHDK/SCRIPTS/ folder of your SD card.Then navigate to the main CHDK menu, find “Scripting parameters”, and click “Load script from file”. Find bracketing.bas, and press set.

Then, scroll down and adjust the script parameters. The step size is the difference between each image taken, in 1/3 EV steps, the correction is the EV of the middle image taken. The only slightly tricky part here is that first parameter is the (number of images – 1)/2. This means that if you want three pictures, it must be 1, five is 2, seven is 3, and so on.

To run the script, exit the menu, leave the camera in alt mode, and press the shutter button.With these different exposures, you can create HDR tone-mapped images, that show very bright and very dark regions exposed properly. For example, taking the seven different images of the lighthouse above into an HDR program such as, optimizing settings for realism, produces this result:You can also use HDR to produce more dramatic photos, such as this train. It is all in how you process the images.There is a lot that can be done with HDR, from, to the scarily surreal, such as this one below from.For more information on HDR photography, Stuck In Customs has an. Taking RAW photosRAW photos can be extremely useful to digital photographer. They enable you to extract more information from bright highlights in an image, and RAW gives the you complete control over white balance. For example, in the above photo the JPG had an incorrect white balance, which was easily corrected using the RAW image.

While DSLRs offer 12 bits of data in RAWs, most point and shoot cameras can only provide 10, meaning that even with CHDK, you won’t be able to extract as much information from highlights as you could with a DSLR. Still, RAWs are very useful for having precise white balance control.In the Raw Parameters menu, enable “Save RAW”, and adjust the other parameters as shown. Now, you can take photos as normal, and a RAW will be automatically saved with your JPG. The RAW file will take quite a bit a more space than the standard JPG, so your camera will not be able to correctly display remaining space on the SD card. Processing RAW photosTo process your RAW photos, you’ll need to convert them to the Digital Negative format, DNG. The software can do this for these cameras: A610, A620, A630, A640, A710 IS, S2 IS, S3 IS, A700, G7, A560, A570 IS, IXUS 700, IXUS 70, IXUS 800, A720 IS, S5 IS, IXUS 950, A650 IS, A460, SD800 IS, A530, A540.

You can also process the files using or, though that is much more difficult.Open DNG4PS-2, then go to settings. Adjust the model settings based on how many megapixels your camera is. Next, press OK, and find the path to RAW files option. This is not the location of the file that you wish to convert, but the folder that contains the files. When you have selected the correct folder, press “Convert”.The DNGs will be in a folder marked with today’s date, and from there, you can process them in Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop, or whichever RAW processing software you prefer.Adding a battery meterTired of have the low battery warning sneak up on you? CHDK can add a battery meter to your camera, though the configuration depends on what type of camera you have.To enable it, go to OSD parameters in the main menu, then to Battery. Edit the parameters so that they are as they appear above, if you have a camera with 4 AA rechargeable batteries.

Cameras with 2 AA rechargeable batteries should be about half of that. For other power sources, experiment to find the best value. Writing your own scriptsCHDK uses a very simple BASIC-like language called UBASIC. It has all of the features that one would expect from any language, but there are many camera specific features. Input/outputEach script begins with a special header, that provides information and control to the user.@title Intervalometer@param a Number of shots@default a 10@param b Interval (Minutes)@default b 1In this header, the title of the script is declared, as are two user adjustable parameters.

The syntax is simple: @title declares a title, @param par declares the name and label of a parameter, and @default par declares the default value of a parameter. Scripts can only receive input through the header, at the beginning of their execution.To output information to the user, the print command is used: print 'Num shots: ', a will print the number of shots, as inputted in the script header. Note the use of the comma to seperate text from variables. The print command is limited to 25 characters of text. To clear what has been printed, use the cls command. Standard program flowlet a = 2for x=1 to 10gosub 'display'next x:displayrem print even numbersif x% a = 0 then print xreturnThis block of code demonstrates many of the logic features of the UBASIC language.

To assign values to variables, use the let command. You can also see a for loop and a subroutine. Note the use of the rem command to insert comments, and the single line if statement. UBASIC supports most standard mathematical comparisons, including +, -,., /,%, =, =, (not equal to), &, , ^ (xor). Camera controlThe meat of UBASIC is in its many commands for controlling the camera: shoot Takes a photo click / press / release 'button' Clicks (press and release), presses, or releases on the cameras buttons.

The following are available: up, down, left, right, set, shoothalf (depresses the shutter halfway), shootfull, zoomin, zoomout, menu, display, print, erase, iso, flash, mf (manual focus), macro, video, timer. Waitclick timeout Waits for a button to be pressed, then continues. The timeout value is optional.

Iskey x 'button' Immediately follows a waitclick command. If the last button pressed is 'button', then the variable x is set with the value of 1. Conceptdraw office pro 8.0.7.4 for mac.

If waitclick timed out, then 'nokey' is used as the button name. Settv val Sets the shutter speed to val. Note that val is not “1/1000” or something similar, but rather an integer value.

Each increase in the integer value corresponds to a 1/3 EV increase. The absolute mapping between integer values and shutter speeds varies between cameras, but tables are available.

This, and all following commands must be used with the camera in manual mode. Settvrel val Sets the shutter speed relative to the current shutter speed.

Example: settvrel 0-1 increases the shutter speed by 1/3 EV. Gettv target Sets target equal to the current shutter speed. Setav val, setavrel val, getav target With the same syntax as shutter speed commands, these adjust aperture settings.

Setzoom val, setzoomrel val, getzoom target Just like settv/settvrel commands. In setzoomrel, val is +/- the relative change. Zoom values range from 0 to 8 or 14 for A-series cameras, and 0 to 128 for S-series cameras. Setzoomspeed x S-series only. Sets the zoom speed, at x% of maximum speed. X may vary between 5 and 100. Setfocus x, getfocus target x/target is distance in millimeters.

Set iso x, get iso target x/target is one of the following values: 0 (Auto ISO), 1 (50/80), 2 (100), 3 (200), 4 (400), 5 (800), -1 (High ISO). Where to go from hereTry checking out the, for more features then are even printed here. Finally, take photos! The most important thing that you can do to improve your photography skills is to take lots of photos.Posted in, Tagged, Post navigation. Now THAT is a freakin hack-a-day article.

I recently discovered it and put it to use with the motion detection on my SD 850 IS. My son had a science project about hummingbirds. We loaded up CHDK with the lightningb script and set the camera on a tripod near our hummingbird feeder. Everytime a hummy flew into the view of the camera, it snapped a picture. I want to use the time lapse next, and also mess with the bulb shutter for use with my telescope. And OMG is it really that hard for canon to include the battery meter on these powershots?

Aparently not. Using CHDK does not void your warranty. It is a temporary firmware change that reverts as soon as you turn the camera off and remove the battery. You are not actually changing/overwriting anything in the camera. There is a letter from canon stating such on the chdk site. Hi there Sorry, I´m german, may english is not the very best.I´ve got a question/suggestion to create the possibility of making own “bullet-Time-Movies”: Is there any hack/possibility to connect several cameras (e.g.

32) and take 1 picture with each camera at the same time (e.g. Via “remote capture”)?The Result has to be 32 images of an objekt, taken at the same time, so that you can move arround the objekt, while “time ist standing still”.

You know the Effect from Matrix.Here is an example of this effekt, made with very expensive Cameras. I hope, it should also work with low-cost cameras.Can anybody help me?

HiI have an old kodak z700 camera, which i intend to use with my telescope.However, sadly the kodak z700 only allows shutter speeds from 8 sec to 1/1000secI wish i could change the firmware by editing it somehow, to allow me to set shutter speeds as much as 30-40 seconds as otherwise, the camera will be useless as an eyepiece for a telescopeKindly help,I am willing to take a risk by editing the camera firmware so as to allow it to capture loooong shutter speeds:)Please!I am desperate! Hi,Many thanks for an introduction to wonderful world of CHDK. Its a whole new world for me.I am in a process of making a motorized panoramic head. This head can be used for 360×180 and timelapse. I can attach cable release to my circuit.

But how can i use CHDK like for 360×180 i have to shoot many pictures. Camera moves, clicks, waits and keep repeating this process. I want HDR options.like whenever i click camera takes pics of my exposure values.I dont have to load script again n again.other taskHow can I know camera focused or not than fire. How can CHDK help me.I am not a scripting man so please help me. Just struggled with the sx40 setup issue – and then found this quick and easy card setup buried as a note in the chkf user quick start guide.