Hacking Canon Cameras with CHDK

CHDK is a program that can be used to get extra features from Canon digital cameras. It works by replacing the standard canon firmware with its own version, giving more granular control over the camera. What’s best is that it doesn’t permanently overwrite the firmware - it runs only for a single boot - so all that’s needed to go back to standard operation is to turn the camera off and on again.

Some of the features of CHDK are aperture, shutter and ISO overrides, shooting in RAW, live histograms and depth of field calculators. It also allows you to script camera functions so you can easily do things like bracketing on a simple compact camera. There’s also reversi, which is novel. All menu features are accessed by standard buttons on the camera and the interface is surprisingly easy to navigate.

I managed to get version 1.02a onto my IXUS 75 and, following the instructions, loaded it up without any hassle. Didn’t get a chance to test out all of the features but it looks promising and it’s now on my SDHC card in case I need it in the future. Only issues I had were when trying to access the menus, the CHDK ones overlaid the Canon ones. This didn’t get in the way too much though.

Only question I have is what the hell does CHDK mean?