For a number of years now, I have been recommending the Canon Powershot series of point and shoot digital cameras to everyone thinking of buying a relatively inexpensive but surprisingly capable digicam. Thanks to a firmware hack called CHDK, it seems they can be made even better. You can activate features normally available only on much higher end cameras, such as live histograms and taking pictures in RAW format.
Unfortunately, the A510 that I use to take all the photos on this blog is too old for the software. When it finally kicks the bucket for good, I may well buy a camera that can me modded in this way.
I learned about this via flying penguin.
Semi-related: how JPEG compression works
Found on Metafilter
There’s a really cracking documentary about photography on BBC Four at the moment, called Genius of Photography. The first programme looked at the historical origins of different photographic methods, and the social and artistic changes that it brought about. Like all good documentaries, it told me some things I didn’t know before, and made me think about photography in a slightly different way.
Hack provides Liveview Canon EOS DSLRs with video recording
By Darren Murph on VideoRecording
If you’re just now starting to come to grips with the fact that Canon’s utterly succulent EOS 5D Mark II is just way, way out of reach, here’s a little something to lessen the impact of your inferiority complex. An enterprising young buck with a passion to bring video capture abilities to other EOS cameras figured out a way to enable that very capability on all Liveview EOS DSLRs. Of course, there’s still the whole “manual focus” requirement — which means that the bulk of your captures will be way out of focus — but it’s a new feature for your existing camera nonetheless. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, why don’t you just push out an official update to add this into more cams, Canon? We mean, can you imagine the look on Nikon’s face if you really came through?
How can I instally CHDK on my S90? Are there instructions online anywhere?