Talk: CHDK firmware usage (obsolete)

Revision as of 07:50, 14 October 2007

Share your concerns and ideas.

Should there be more extenive documentation for each feature?

Would we need a more extensive explanation on the use of the various histograms for people new to using them?

For example: I recently found how very handy the color histograms can be just for testing and setting the "My Colors" feature. I couldn't understand why I was getting so many over-exposure warnings even though I set my Contrast to -2. Come to find out I had left Saturation on a +1 setting. This was showing up on the color graphs going out of bounds all too often. I set Saturation back to zero and most all the warnings went away. Nice!

> Would we need a more extensive explanation on the use of the various histograms for people new to using them?

Yeah, why not? Or maybe just a link? I like this explanation of histograms: http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/histograms/histograms.htm

I like the new pictures very much. It would also be nice to have a picture where you can see the new Zebra mode in action (=active zebra shadows/highlights, possibly combined with a (blended) histogram overlay). Unfortunately I have no second camera to do this myself.

Harvester

New Firmware Usage Page

Hi all,

I am wondering if anyone has ever came across a solution to modify / add entries in the camera's internal hotpixel mapping file. Since this site is discussing an alternative F/W, I would be glad if someone would tell me the secret, how to map out my 3-6 hotpixels I've found....

Thanks,

ZuLu

Harvester, did you do all that??

If so (or whoever did it) ... WOW! NICE!

This whole CHDK Wikia is rivaling most user manuals that I've read!!

~Keo~

No, I think it was GrAnd. Amazing work, thank you very much for all the nice pics!

Harvester

Now that's one busy guy! I'm askeered to go see what tonight's firmware update might have. It means editing the pages again. :-) (hopefully he found something more fun to do for the weekend)

~Keo~

I've read here many postings about the S3 shortcut bug. I tried to include the workaround into this Wiki. Since I don't have a S3, I might have gotten something wrong... please correct me then!

Harvester

Looks okay to me. I still like holding down the [Flash/Audio-memo] button before I press for ALT though. If I don't then when I run a script when I press the shutter it changes my shortcut settings. I think there's enough info there to let folks figure it out, and to at least alert them to a work-around that they can learn.

~Keo~

Great pictures on the page! I would assume that these of the LCD panel? Are the VF results the same?

As a matter of interest, has anyone discovered a way to shoot a VF image?
Dmforcier 16:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

These pictures were grabbed from TV-out connected to MiniDV camcorder which was connected to PC through IEEE-1394. :) --GrAnd 18:10, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Text-only Version

Oh, this text-only version is a very nice idea! I have not tried it yet, but it definitly sounds very useful!

Harvester

I cleaned out as many line-feeds as possible, so it'll format a little better in the File Reader. And put in "------" section headings throughout so it might be easier to scroll to the area of interest by just using the zoom-in/out controller to scroll by pages, easier to spot the sections.

If you change something in the main Wiki - Firmware Usage pages, feel free to re-edit that file again and post it again somewhere easy to download. There might be places where some superfluous text could be removed too to make it more succinct.

I just wanted to say what a great job everyone has done with this WIKI. I still want to help ,,,but I'm so busy right now I can't. Thanks,Don

The link to the text version seems broken.

Erase All -- Bug or Wonderful Feature?

I noticed something interesting today with my S3 IS.

I have CHDK installed on a 4gig card, so it means I have to manually boot up CHDK when needed. I was experimenting with taking some RAW files today. I know from the past that when you use the camera's built-in "Erase All" feature that it would leave the RAW files behind (when I was using 2gig self-booting SD cards, write-protect locked).

Well, I noticed that if just after boot up. and then loading CHDK, if I went to the camera's "Erase All" feature, that it would delete the whole 10x_CANON" folder, RAW files included.

However, if I took some RAW files in one session, then shut off the camera, started it again, took some more RAW files, and THEN when to the "Erase All" function, it would leave 1 behind from the previous (or current?) session. (I didn't pay attention to file numbers, I only know when I used CHDK's file-browser that the 10x_CANON folder was still there and one RAW file in it.)

Anyway, instead of going into CHDK's file-browser menu, I found I could just get rid of all the old files after a clean boot using "Erase All". This might be a quirk of using the 4gig card without the SD card-lock enabled or something.

I am using a RAW filename format of IMG_xxx.CR2 if that's of any importance. I changed it to see if other RAW file programs could read the files. This could be some rudimentary code in Canon's camera firmware that's recognizing their own CR2 RAW-file extension and allowing the deletion of them.

Thought you might like to know. And also in case you are hoping to save all your RAW files by using "Erase All" to get rid of the JPG files, that under some circumstances you might erase the RAW files too. :)

Camera can delete all files with the same number at once. For example, if you make audio comment for a picture 'IMG_1234.JPG', camera creates sound file 'SND_1234.WAV'. If you decide to erase file 'IMG_1234.JPG', the complementary sound file will be deleted as well. For some RAW-files extensions camera behaviour is the same.

BUT! Camera does not see any RAW files until you switch off/on the camera. If camera recognises that complementary RAW file exists the icon "broken sound file" will be displayed near a file number in play mode.

-- GrAnd 19:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC) --

Hyperfocal Manual-Focus Tip (S3 IS):

I notice that I am limited to the number of manual focus-steps depending on what setting my zoom lens is at. This can make it difficult to take full advantage of the exact hyper-focal distance read-out from CHDK.

The S3 IS has a nice little manual focus assist feature. That once you are in manual focus and did your best with the UP and DOWN buttons to focus your subject, you can press the SET button to let the camera try to auto fine-tune that focus for you even more. The feature limits itself to search for a better focus within a very narrow range.

I've noticed in the past that if it can't lock on something strong in contrast to focus on, that it will gradually step outward in very small increments to INF(inity).

SO ... if you are ever in need of trying to get closer to the hyper-focal distance, once you have locked your camera into manual focus: Try to get as close to the required hyper-focal distance as possible with the UP and DOWN buttons. Then aim the camera at something low in contrast (the sky perhaps), and press your SET button. Then HALF-press the shutter button to see what the new manual (F) focus distance is. (CHDK doesn't seem to update the F number during manual focus steps in latest versions of it, so you have to half-press the shutter button to make it update the (F) display number.)

If you haven't gotten close enough to the Hyper-focal distance, then press SET again (while pointed at a low-contrast area), it will make one more micro-focus step toward infinity for you.

Repeat until you are at the focus distance you wanted.

OR, conversely, scan around with your camera in auto-focus mode until it locks on something at the hyper-focal distance and then hit the MF button to lock it in. Sometimes finding something the right distance isn't always available, like when out on a boat for example or a busy crowd. Then resort to the manual-focus + SET button routine.

Text reader - spaces between characters

I've noticed a problem in the text reader which concerns the spaces between characters. They are not all the same, so sometimes it looks as if you have a space char where there should not be any. The problems appears on my A610(e) and all fonts seem to have it, but at different positions. Let's take Arial20b.rbf here as an example: I have distinct spaces before every "j" and "y" and "Y" so that they look like " j", " y", " Y". If you want to test this, copy the following stuff into a text file and open it with your camera:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

______

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

______

zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbazyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbazyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba

______

ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA

______

0123456789098765432101234567890987654321012345678909876543210

______

a.a,a;a!a?a:a-a_a.a,a;a!a?a:a-a_a

Answer: These spaces are in font files. The files are needed to be edited manually, because RBF-font editor imports from TTF fonts slightly incorrect (various spacing issue). You can edit them with rbfEditor. This program is quite simple to use, but I severely miss an "undo" function. So better save from time to time :)
Here you can find space corrected versions of the Arial_bold fonts.

Haw can I change size OSD fonts ??

Build # Comments

Build #86

(Fixes for S-series mostly)

S-series: Zoom rocker controls manual focus only if [mf] button is pressed
S-series: Various buttons to enter in <alt> mode: [shortcut], [flash], [timer], [iso], [video]
S-series: Short press of <alt>-button - enter to <alt> mode; long press - original behaviour
S-series: Extended buttons support in script (function 'click') - "iso", "flash", "mf", "macro", "video", "timer"
Made the circle of confusion information more precised for each camera model
Sokoban: Added undo/redo feature controlled by zoom rocker

All I can say is WHOO HOOO!!!!!! (S-owner here) YES YES YES!! I love these! THANK YOU!!! (insert major smiley-happy-face doing a happy-dance) Oh man, with those extra scripting controls, the sky is the limit on what can be done now!!! And those button options? Brilliant!!! Especially that short/long button press option! I don't want to see any more bitching from anyone about <alt> buttons causing problems! (especially not from me :-) )

Okay, I'm done going crazy for a bit, until the next wonderful release. :-)

Wow, and you even fixed the zebra mode with Auto-Flash mode! What a nice work-around, momentarily putting the flash mode into manual mode just when showing zebra. Wonderful!!!

THANK YOU!! CHDK is just about PERFECT now!! And I may even try to finally solve some Sokoban levels with that undo feature. I've been too scared! :-)

(oops, the zoom-rocker and MF button seems to be crippled. Holding in the MF button IN when using the zoom rocker puts MF out of MF mode and no longer adjusts MF, I suspect it's just a typo oversight when you were coding. But the up/down buttons still work it just fine. Nice to see you working on that. It will be a nice upgrade when it works right. Thought I'd throw in this quick bug-report. Everything else seems to be working great so far though!)

I hope I've fixed this in #87. It was just copy-paste issue. --GrAnd 17:58, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Works GREAT!!!! :-) :-) :-) ... Soon as I get some time I'll try to add in all the extra scripting commands in the Wiki ... (unless someone beat me to it!)

Raw files. I have set my canon powershot a710 IS to save to raw files. When i load the pictures into my computer I only have images with the extention .jpg. I hve set prefix and extention to CRW. Can somebody help me?

The game Sokoban have a bug. If you have the automatic pic rotation on, you came in the next level, if you turn the A710 at 90°. Thank for CHDK

Sorry for my bad english. Daniel

Talk: CHDK firmware usage (obsolete)

Revision as of 07:50, 14 October 2007

Contents

New Firmware Usage Page

Suggested Fonts for the File Reader

Text-only Version

Erase All -- Bug or Wonderful Feature?

Hyperfocal Manual-Focus Tip (S3 IS):

Text reader - spaces between characters

Build # Comments

other video formats (dvd or divx)