

Using the Canon Hack Dev. Kit -- Enables Cameras to Perform Neat Tricks - A_A
http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/using-the-canon-hack-development-kit

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listic
CHDK is great, but Canon's point&shoot cameras are so hackable because Canon
made it so (you just have to put something on SD, no need for permanent
firmware change), presumably for their own internal reasons (easier
debugging?).

This is a question that bothers me a great deal - with all the flourishing of
Open Source, are our systems on average getting more Open?

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ShabbyDoo
What's the disadvantage of openness for Canon? It's not like the firmware was
limiting features as a way of artificially segmenting the market, so they're
not losing revenue because of circumvented price discrimination. Presuming
that there are controls outside the firmware's control which prevent hardware
damage (and therefore warranty claims), what's the issue with limiting
customer service and warranty claims to only issues experienced with the
standard firmware?

Why not go a step further and ship the camera with a grandma-friendly firmware
but host an open source community which provides various Canon-curated
firmware versions? What could be done to make Canon's cameras suitable for
even more cool hacks? How could this not sell cameras? Those most trusted by
non-techies to recommend products surely would hold more favorable opinions of
those cameras as a result.

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wzdd
CHDK is amazing, not least because it runs on such a wide range of cameras.
I'm doing some book scanning at the moment using a home-made scanning support,
Tesseract OCR software, and an ancient A570 camera running CHDK so I can get a
remote shutter. Setting the whole thing up was far less painful than expected.

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pluies
CHDK is an awesome hack.

Last time I've heard of it, no DSLRs was supported, only PowerShots. It looks
like they managed to get custom firmwares working for the 400D, 550D and the
5D mkII — still all very alpha stage, but that's very good news. :)

~~~
tb
Looking at the gallery in the OP, most of the features enabled by CHDK are
standard in DSLRs anyway - RAW shooting, longer shutter speeds, full manual
control, etc. As a DSLR shooter, I was looking through that gallery thinking,
"what does CHDK allow that I can't already do with my camera?" until I
realised they were doing it with P&S cameras.

