Mike Agerbo: Really it's amazing the technology that can build into digital cameras nowadays, especially the point-and-shoots.
The nice thing about the point-and-shoot cameras I've got one you from Canon, is that they make things really easy. There is lot of automatic settings here, but there are some manual settings as well.
If you want to take that to a whole new level, I want to show you today a hack that gives you complete and other control of all the features on the camera that you never thought you had.
They have actually got a community that have developed the CHDK, the Canon Hack Development Kit, and don't worry it won't screw up the camera whatsoever. We are going to be updating the firmware on the camera, and we won't be doing it right into the camera itself, we'll be doing it via, the SD card or the memory card where you typically store the pictures.
The first thing that we want to do is find out what version a firmware that you do have on your camera. And again, this is for people that want to take complete control of the camera, I guess one of a prosumer. So essentially we go to the CHDK wiki site here and here I've got the step-by-step instructions.
I don't know what firmware I have yet, I just need one of these files because that particular file I was talking about is in all of these. I am just going to drag-and-drop that file over. So once that's on there, I am going to take the SD card out and I am going to put it back in the camera. This is going to help us determine what the firmware is of the camera.
What I want to do now is put it down to the playback mode, so not to the camera mode, but right down to the playback mode. Turn the camera on and from here I want to hold the function, there is the button right in the middle of the cursor pad and the display key at the same time.
Right there it says firmware version GM1.02A, we want it right that down, because we need to go back to the website to get the proper file. Take the SD card out once more because we need to put some more files on this little guy, put that back into my computer; card slot here. So going back to that file page, and there it is, 1.02A, this is the exact file that I want to download.
Once I have done all that, just take it out. I am going to put the card back into the camera, click the Menu, and from here I want to make sure that I am in that Play menu, I can go down and there is an option here called Firmware Update, and again you don't have to worry about wrecking the camera, it's only taking the firmware off of the actual memory card, it's not writing it into the camera itself. So hit OK, and it's asking me Update the firmware? Yes. It's just takes literally a couple of seconds, you can see it's working right now.
So I just hit this little shortcut button up here. You can see the little Alt down on the screen and now I get an alternative menu with a lot more functionality. Check that out. I have got all sorts of new controls that this point-and-shoot can do.
Imagine now you can actually take raw picture files. I have Zebra parameters, I have got a calendar, I even have games as well. You can go and play Reversi, I actually play games on my camera. This is kind of cool too. I am just going to go back to the camera mode and I have got extra things here, check this out.
I can see the exact percentage of battery life I have left. I also have the exact amount of memory that's on the SD card; the memory card. Over here I have got the things like the temperature of the camera even the time as well. And these are all extra functions that firmware has given me. You'll spend literally hours trying all these new features and again you don't have to worry that you've monkeyed up your camera, if you don't want to do that stuff anymore, you basically just take it back to the regular menu and you are good to go.
So obviously we would have to jump through a few hoops to make this work, but once it's done, your Canon camera has a whole set of new functions that you could only dream of.
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