Corbacho en Finlandia

Canon A590 + CHDK: supercamera

Friday June 26th, 2009. 01:25 PM. [Photos, Videos]. 8 Comments.

Since my camera broke at the beginning of this year, after 2 years of “intensive” use and lots of falls!, (Rest in peace)… I was thinking to buy a new one.

What camera to buy, and what money with? Still now I’m looking for job, and life in Finland is not cheap indeed. So with some money I got from my relatives in my birthday I had the chance to buy a new one, and my hope was to jump from a compact camera to a more professional DSLR Digital single-lens reflex camera.

There are 2 problems: DSLR prices start around 500 €, and these cameras are meant only to take quality photographs, so forget about recording video, something that I appreciate in a camera. This was a problem during many years until 2008, when Canon released the Cannon EOS 5D Mark II,(>1500€) and Canon 500D (> 800€) both with HD Video… great, but so expensive still. Like always happens in hardware technology, these features will be seen in 2 years at afordable prices, and probably in 4 years even in normal mobile phones. So I will wait.

But in the meanwhile I found a reasonable solution: the compact camera Canon Powershot A590 (129 € in Verkkokaupa Tampere) + CHDK.
Before choosing a camera, always I recommend people who ask me advice to read analysis of cameras at Camera Labs and DC Resource, where they test them and give real opinions with pro’s & con’s.

The main reason to choose this model A590, even is a old model (2008) and has been replaced by the thiner Canon 1000 IS, it’s that is supported by CHDK

What is CHDK? Let’s get to the point of this post!.
CHDK stands for Canon-Hack Development Kit and of course is not made by Canon. It was created originally by a ¿russian? programmer VitalityB, and later developed by many others (under open GPL free software license). CHDK was created by reverse engineering and allows you to expand many features that only are available in expensive cameras. CHDK will even allow you to program the camera through scripts using BASIC programming language. (GOTO’s are not dead still)

It’s ONLY for Canon Cameras and ONLY for some models. Because it’s voluntary work, it goes slow, and new Canon Cameras are not supported until many months later of their release.

Digital cameras are like tiny computers, with their processor, memory and program loaded (menu). So CHDK is a small program that you put in the SD memory card and when you turn on the camera it loads into the camera internal memory. You can control the program through a menu in the camera, also turn it off and use the “normal” menu of the camera. What kind of features can unlock? and what offers? I will comment the more interesting ones for me, but in CHDK Web you can see all the information, FAQ and Scripts.

* Save the photographs in RAW format. This feature is only available from medium-high level cameras but with CHDK it’s unlocked. Comparision between RAW-JPEG
* Full manual or priority control over exposure, aperture, ISO and focus. Again, parameters normally only available in professional cameras.
* Bracketing is supported for exposure, aperture, ISO, and even focus.. Take several pictures in a row changing one of the paremeters. It allows you for example to create HDR photos joining several images or Stack Photography.
* Motion detection. This is really cool, detects movement and shoots automatically. Nice to shoot animals in nature for example, lightnings and any other creative use that you want. In Flickr you can get some inspiration and possibilities of this script

(Photo by Jose Viana)
* Intervalometer scripts: These scripts are easy algorithms that takes photographs at regular times, for example 1 photo every 20 seconds. Join them in a video with Adobe After Effects or and you will have a stop-motion video.

Intervalometer script can be used also for Kate Aerial Photography, with really nice results

I bought the A590 camera and also a tripod 1.70 meters 24€ because most of this features work better when the camera is stable. I will be publishing in the blog interesting stuff that can be done with the help of CHDK. But it takes time to learn it and get used to it. Lots of options to test and learn. After 1 month I still haven’t discovered half of the possibilities but I can already recommend it! I don’t regret of the purchase.

Examples of my own:
* Time-lapse video of Summer Solstice 2009 in Tampere, Finland.