California L33
06-14-2008, 01:33 AM
CHDK expands the capabilities of Canon point and shoot cameras giving them many DSLR capabilities. It’s really useful- RAW shooting, on screen highlight blowout and shadow to black warnings, the ability to run several types of bracketing scripts and to put your choice of grids onscreen, but I found the CHDK wiki a bit confusing. All the information is there, but it’s spread out over many pages, so I want to give a brief description of how to get it to run on a Canon A650 IS (and probably any other DryOS Canon camera as well, as long as you get the correct version for the camera), and the standard disclaimer applies- I didn’t write CHDK. The information herein comes from web sources, but I do have CHDK on my camera. It does work, and this is the technique I used to get it running.
First, I was hesitant to use CHDK because it wasn’t immediately clear that it doesn’t mess with the firmware of your camera. To confuse things further some helpful wiki editor put links to the Canon website’s firmware update page on the CHDK page- as if you might need it if something goes wrong loading CHDK, and then gives warnings about the perils of updating firmware. These are legitimate warnings. If you change the firmware of your camera and something goes wrong during the update you can end up with a dead camera. BUT, CHDK itself isn’t firmware (even if some of its editors call it that- probably a mistranslation from the developer’s original Russian). It doesn’t touch the original Canon firmware. It’s software. It’s loaded into the camera’s RAM via the SD card every time the camera is turned on, and eliminated every time it’s turned off. Change the SD card or delete the software from it and you’re back where you started. When I finally figured that out after dragging myself across most of the wiki’s pages I decided to proceed.
Procedure-
Download the correct CHDK software to your computer. That means choose the software that corresponds to your camera’s model number. There are different versions of CHDK for many cameras as well. (Since CHDK is open source different developers come up with different features and put them in their own versions). Your best option is probably ‘allbest.’ ‘Allbest’ incorporates the most popular features in one version- all the best.
Download the Cardtricks software as well- you need it to setup CHDK to run on a DryOS camera.
Unzip and copy the CHDK software to your SD card using a card reader connected to your computer. You CANNOT copy it to your camera using a USB cable.
Unlike pre-DryOS cameras the only way to load CHDK is to have it auto load. To do this the SD card with the CHDK on it must be bootable. To make the card bootable you must use the Cardtricks software. (Or have access to a camera already running CHDK, which I won’t describe as you wouldn’t be reading this).
Cardtricks comes with dire warnings about the damage it can cause. It’s true enough that it could damage your computer because it has built in drive formatting capabilities. If you run Cardtricks and choose to format your C: drive accidentally you could be in big trouble. (The author said he has tried to make it smart enough to check the drive type and reject a command to change a fixed drive, but he can’t guarantee it will work on every system). Anyway, run Cardtricks and choose the card reader as the drive. If you’re using a 2GB or smaller card you don’t need to reformat it. All you have to do is click ‘Make card bootable.’ You don’t need any of the other options. It takes less than a second- so fast that you wonder if it’s done anything. The card reader drive light flashes and you’re done.
Take the SD card out of the reader. Set the erase protect tab to ‘lock’ and put it in the camera. If all has gone well you’ll see the CHDK splash screen when you turn the camera on. (And even though the card is ‘locked’ you can still record pictures- part of CHDK). If you want to use the same card without loading CHDK just turn off the camera, set the tab to unlocked, and turn it on again.
That’s it in a nutshell. You’ll need DNG4PS2 if you’re using CHDK to record RAW. DNG4PS2 will convert the camera RAW pictures to dng for your photo editor. Somewhere on one of the wikis it said that Picasa will convert RAW to dng. It’s true its documentation says it does, but not with the RAW files CHDK creates on my 650 IS. DNG4PS2 does it.
First, I was hesitant to use CHDK because it wasn’t immediately clear that it doesn’t mess with the firmware of your camera. To confuse things further some helpful wiki editor put links to the Canon website’s firmware update page on the CHDK page- as if you might need it if something goes wrong loading CHDK, and then gives warnings about the perils of updating firmware. These are legitimate warnings. If you change the firmware of your camera and something goes wrong during the update you can end up with a dead camera. BUT, CHDK itself isn’t firmware (even if some of its editors call it that- probably a mistranslation from the developer’s original Russian). It doesn’t touch the original Canon firmware. It’s software. It’s loaded into the camera’s RAM via the SD card every time the camera is turned on, and eliminated every time it’s turned off. Change the SD card or delete the software from it and you’re back where you started. When I finally figured that out after dragging myself across most of the wiki’s pages I decided to proceed.
Procedure-
Download the correct CHDK software to your computer. That means choose the software that corresponds to your camera’s model number. There are different versions of CHDK for many cameras as well. (Since CHDK is open source different developers come up with different features and put them in their own versions). Your best option is probably ‘allbest.’ ‘Allbest’ incorporates the most popular features in one version- all the best.
Download the Cardtricks software as well- you need it to setup CHDK to run on a DryOS camera.
Unzip and copy the CHDK software to your SD card using a card reader connected to your computer. You CANNOT copy it to your camera using a USB cable.
Unlike pre-DryOS cameras the only way to load CHDK is to have it auto load. To do this the SD card with the CHDK on it must be bootable. To make the card bootable you must use the Cardtricks software. (Or have access to a camera already running CHDK, which I won’t describe as you wouldn’t be reading this).
Cardtricks comes with dire warnings about the damage it can cause. It’s true enough that it could damage your computer because it has built in drive formatting capabilities. If you run Cardtricks and choose to format your C: drive accidentally you could be in big trouble. (The author said he has tried to make it smart enough to check the drive type and reject a command to change a fixed drive, but he can’t guarantee it will work on every system). Anyway, run Cardtricks and choose the card reader as the drive. If you’re using a 2GB or smaller card you don’t need to reformat it. All you have to do is click ‘Make card bootable.’ You don’t need any of the other options. It takes less than a second- so fast that you wonder if it’s done anything. The card reader drive light flashes and you’re done.
Take the SD card out of the reader. Set the erase protect tab to ‘lock’ and put it in the camera. If all has gone well you’ll see the CHDK splash screen when you turn the camera on. (And even though the card is ‘locked’ you can still record pictures- part of CHDK). If you want to use the same card without loading CHDK just turn off the camera, set the tab to unlocked, and turn it on again.
That’s it in a nutshell. You’ll need DNG4PS2 if you’re using CHDK to record RAW. DNG4PS2 will convert the camera RAW pictures to dng for your photo editor. Somewhere on one of the wikis it said that Picasa will convert RAW to dng. It’s true its documentation says it does, but not with the RAW files CHDK creates on my 650 IS. DNG4PS2 does it.