Canon Super Point & Shoots

[TexasShadow]

FYI

CHDK (http://lifehacker.com/387380/turn-your-point+and+shoot-into-a-super+camera)

[DFW_Warrior]

Sweet, I'm going to have to try this one out! Thanks Elzi!

[Desert Skies]

Cool Elzi, thanks.:thumb:

[WoodButcher]

Cool. Gonna have to play with that.

[ed29]

Okay, I loaded this on my A570IS and am getting familiar with engaging it and turning it off. It really adds a lot of controls, most of which I have yet to understand. Image quality of a given shot in RAW mode is incredible compared to JPG mode. The crimp is that each shot in RAW occupies almost 9 meg of space, compared to less than 3 for JPG. One third capacity, I will save this for special shots, and stock up on 2 gig or bigger cards for Big Bend and Utah.

One note for those of us with multiple cards. I have to load the CHDK files on each memory card because they do not stay resident on the camera itself. I fouled my camera up royally while fumbling with the settings and a simple power cycle returned it to un-modified mode. Going back into the upgraded mode I was able to select the default reset and undo the messed up custom settings. It must be fool proof, since this fool right here was able to fix the rookie mistakes without support.

Thanks for the info Elzi.

[TexasShadow]

Note: from what I've read thus far with a quick perusal, the upgrade works only on 2GB cards. One or more of the versions may/will support larger memory cards soon, if not already (somewhere). Looks like I'll be buying a box of 2GB cards......

The upgrade has to be manually activated each time the camera is booted on. However, it can be set to auto-boot, which I will be doing with several cards since I'm often a pistol shooter (quickly grab out of tank bag and shoot with one hand).

RAW images have to be converted to DNG format for most of the popular photo processing software.

[ed29]

One more bit of info.., My A570IS does not seem to do 'disk mode'. I used a card reader to place the files directly on the card. Standard picture upload connection did not recognize the raw image, so again I used the card reader to move it to the computer. It looks like the card reader will become part of the traveling package for trips.

I used a junk picture to test the raw format, deleted it already from the PC and the card. I will shoot a couple of better ones and play with them. My Picasa2 software seems to be able to load the raw image and gives options for save format afterwards. This will take some experimenting on my part.

[TexasShadow]

One more bit of info.., My A570IS does not seem to do 'disk mode'. I used a card reader to place the files directly on the card. If you read the entire wiki, transferring the files via card reader is recommended.

Standard picture upload connection did not recognize the raw image, so again I used the card reader to move it to the computer. Again, read all of the wiki. As I posted, RAW files have to be converted. A few freeware programs are listed. Picassa is listed as one, but better ones are also listed.