CHDK for S95 - part II

[emutier]

this is the continuation of
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=36722674

news: beta 11 for firmware 1.00E and 1.00H is out, all major features working, no confirmed bugs left. a great job from waldo from CHDK forum!

download links for latest release (and ongoing S95 thread of CHDK forum
http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,5641.0.html

quick overview about what happened so far

what is CHDK? call it a firmware "upgrade", but it's no firmware - read anything here: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

Canon decided to not let us zoom/refocus in videos without CHDK. thanks to some great people you can and further will be able to do nice stuff NO camera can do with CHDK. just try

will it damage my cam? no crashed cam (without abuse) known so far. it is loaded everytime from SD card and no loaded if you don't want to. won't change your cam's firmware.

things you may need CHDK for:
zooming in videos
refocus in videos (but NOT continous, only on button press)
manual focus in videos
1/10.000s and 5min pictures
running scrips (intercallometers, motion detection, and so on)
many lots muchos more

how to install: in this case, as it is a beta, you need to take any CHDK version (e.g. for the S90) from the autobuild server http://mighty-hoernsche.de/ - extract that on you SD card and overwrite with the 2 files from the latest beta for you S95 afterwards. if you are to lazy to check which firmware your S95 has, just try, only the right one will work. start the cam with a long press of the play button, go to menu and select firmware update to load CHDK if needed. more about install and how to set CHDK to autoboot on poweron:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100513055511/chdk/images/9/91/CHDK_Installation_Guide.pdf

sample videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMtINJLs7Hc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQOCd3trUfw

 

[emutier]

Forum Server is down from time to time, here are waldos links for Beta v.11

S95 1.00E binaries:
http://www.zshare.net/download/846397255b926f48/

S95 1.00H binaries:
http://www.zshare.net/download/846397733e1d72dc/

 

[bartP]

anyone using chdk raw dng with the s95? Wondering if it looks better than the current Canon Raw file (which I don't like)

Thanks.

 

[archiebald]

I just installed CHDK on my new S95 on a two partition 16GB card.

Great!!!

Just having the ability to re-focus without having to stop and re-start each video clip was enough justification alone.

I have it set up so it is doing virtually nothing, just sits in the beackground very unobtrusively.

 

[bartP]

Hi Archibald,

Can you please fill me in which chdk version you installed on your s95? I installed the K version, did the badpixel test en enabled dng, but cannot produce the DNG raw. Thanks,
Bart

 

[bartP]

no text

 

[archiebald]

Hi Archibald,

Can you please fill me in which chdk version you installed on your s95? I installed the K version, did the badpixel test en enabled dng, but cannot produce the DNG raw. Thanks,
Bart

I have firmware 1.00e, I installed s95-100e-0.9.9-1240-full_BETA.zip

I have no interest in DNG so sorry I can't help you on that, the Canon RAW is all I need.

My real interest is for;
Re-focus in video,
Optical zoom in video,
Scripts for intervalometer and motion detector.

All of which are working very nicely.

 

[panamforeman]

I have the G12 & S95. And wouldn't mind using CHDK. But both are still in Beta and from what I'm reading about those who are trying it, half or more are having many many problems. Both of my cameras are early releases: FW for G12 - 1.00c; for S95 - 1.00e. Should I wait until final & complete versions of CHDK are released?

All I really want is auto focus in videos, longer shutter times etc. Maybe those features will be in the new G13/14? or the S100?

Also if I may ask the question: If all the features you "pickup" with CHDK are "latent" in the cameras anyway, why doesn't Canon either activate them with a FW update, or make it easier for us to activate them, rather than jumpiing thru all these CHDK hoops? I realize the ? exposes my ignorance about these things, but I would really like to know. And from what I read on the Canon Forum, there are some really smart guys here.

 

[archiebald]

I have the G12 & S95. And wouldn't mind using CHDK. But both are still in Beta and from what I'm reading about those who are trying it, half or more are having many many problems. Both of my cameras are early releases: FW for G12 - 1.00c; for S95 - 1.00e. Should I wait until final & complete versions of CHDK are released?

All I really want is auto focus in videos, longer shutter times etc. Maybe those features will be in the new G13/14? or the S100?

Also if I may ask the question: If all the features you "pickup" with CHDK are "latent" in the cameras anyway, why doesn't Canon either activate them with a FW update, or make it easier for us to activate them, rather than jumpiing thru all these CHDK hoops? I realize the ? exposes my ignorance about these things, but I would really like to know. And from what I read on the Canon Forum, there are some really smart guys here.

Can't speak about the G12 but the S95 beta version is working fine.

Don't hold your breath for any of the CHDK features to be implemented by Canon.

In any case, as far as I am aware, there has never been a reported case camera damage from using CHDK.

By the way, my S95 is 1.00e but I only bought it last week. However, mine is the Japanese market version that only features Japanese and English languages. The firmware code has probably as much to do with regional differences as it does with refinements in code.

 

[PhilM oz]

G12 is no longer a Beta version (has not been for a few weeks now).

A patch was posted yesterday to fix a problem with the AV override - I'm not aware of any other significant issues with the G12 version.

An S95 update patch was posted this morning that fixes a few issues - this should be available on the autobuild server within a few days.

Phil.

--
http://www.pbase.com/phil_a_mitchell

 

[bartP]

Thanks for the update Phil. Highly appreciated. Got the s95 2 days ago. Hope the 310HS will have the same detail as the 100IS instead of the ( in my idea) crippled s95 noise reduced RAW.

 

[panamforeman]

Appreciate your answers and I will go ahead and use CHDK for my G12 now that it is out of beta. I'm hopeful for no snags.

However, as to my question about latent features. Perhaps I asked the question the wrong way.

Does Canon have only one or two OS (operating systems - the software that runs the computer in their cameras) and then they disable certain features of the OS depending on the model camera? i.e. the $7000 unit (like the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV) gets all the features operating. And as the price gets smaller, more of the total features available, get disabled? Until you get to the G12, S95; Then, only some features are activated, but most are disabled vis a vis the $7000 unit??

Is that what CHDK does? It enables the features that are already there, but disabled?

It would seem to make sense that Canon wouldn't have a separate OS for each camera they make, but one complete OS & one CPU - with the ability/provision for the programmer to disable certain features depending on the model.

Just a thought. Maybe I'm all wrong here.

 

[PhilM oz]

CHDK is a combination of many things:

• enabling disabled features (e.g. SuperFine JPEG mode, or zooming during video recording).
• extending existing functionality (e.g. long shutter speeds).
• mostly it's brand new functionality (e.g. bracketing in continuous shooting, edge overlay, zebra etc, saving raw images as DNG files, scripting, usb remote triggering, ...)

Canon have a core OS; but each camera's firmware is unique.

Phil.

--
http://www.pbase.com/phil_a_mitchell

 

[jipnet]

I'm unsuccessfully trying to load CHDK onto my S95. I've manually copied over the right files for my firmware version, but can't for the life of me find the tab in MENU to use for loading / updating firmware. Can anyone explain where it is? I also tried a few SDM and other autoloaders, and they resulted in "fail" (in a few cases claiming the volume label was too long, ie over 11 characters). but this should be possible to do without autoloaders, correct?

thx

 

[I2K4]

No one's answered, and I'm not sure how you're installing. I use a trusty "out of date" app limited to Windows and a 4GB SDHC card: Cardtricks

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_For_Newbies_-_How_To_Install

Can't help with a larger SDHC or different operating system. People's experiences seem hit and miss with them. Cardtricks is simple and just works, but has those limitations. Good luck.

 

[waterwingz]

The most current information about loading CHDK for any camera or card size is always at this link :

Prepare Your SD Card

Recently, the STICK utility has become the preferred solution for preparing CHDK SD cards. Cardtricks is very old and limited to SD cards of 4G or less.

For booting via the "Firmware Update" method, you need to start the camera by pressing the Playback button - not the On/Off switch. The option should appear as the last menu item on the left hand tab (the one that opens first when you press "Menu") if you have a file named ps.fi2 in the root (top) directory of your SD card.