03.22.08
Glad I Passed on the Panasonic
Last Fall, I found myself in need of a digital camera. I had previously intended to save up for one of those pseudo-DSLRs (my needs rarely extend into true DSLR territory), but I needed one right away, and I needed it to be portable. I ended up with a Canon PowerShot SD850IS, which has served me well. The image quality is pretty good, and it’s portable enough to occasionally forget that I have it with me. The main features I wish it had: RAW image support and exposure bracketing.
As of today, thanks to the CHDK firmware, it has both of those features and a whole lot more (including an always-present battery gauge, rather than an icon that only pops up when the battery is running low — a frequent complaint about the PowerShot line). Other interesting features include automatic focus bracketing (to combine three images into one with infinite depth of field), live histogram, exposure times ranging from 65 seconds to 1/10,000 of a second, a depth of field calculator, and the ability to write scripts for it in uBasic. It can even be set to automatically photograph lightning. The firmware works on most Canon PowerShot cameras, and it makes no modifications to the built-in firmware: reverting to the camera’s stock setup is as simple as deleting a couple of files from your memory card.
I think at this point the only upgrade that would interest me would be a true DSLR, and since there are so many other things for me to spend my money on right now, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. So, I’ll just spend some time exploring CHDK for now. Maybe I’ll get some good shots of Easter Dinner tomorrow.
