Once again, I’ve gotten myself a Canon compact camera that can run CHDK.
Apart from some minor details, it works great. One of the stupid things is that the lens does not come out automagically when turning on camera with CHDK activated. I need to do a half press of the shutter first… OK, I can live with that, typically I use the standard firmware for point’n’shoot, and only use the CHDK when I want to do some scripting.
CHDK is fun as always. Easy to do new things, quite easy to create your own scripts. But I’m a bit flustered – there is not very much documentation on some functions – how to check if camera has aquired a good autofocous for instance? I don’t know if this is problems with the camera hw, or bad documentation from CHDK’s side.
Anyway, its entertaining to be able to script my camera, and with a gorilla pod, AC adapter from ebay, and 4GB memory card, thet total price is around 220$ for the package. Unbeatable amount of fun for that money 🙂
The possibilities are nearly endless:
- Raw photos from a compact camera.
- Motion detection.
- Zebra striping of under/over exposed areas before taking a photo.
- Greater manual control over camera.
The list goes on, and their FAQ explains it quite well.