The first thing I did after charging the SD1000s battery, which actually charges pretty quickly (maybe an hour or two), was install CHDK. The instructions are available at the CHK Wiki. Also a lot of info is on the CHDK Forum. I’ll give a quick summary of what I did below. This is from a Mac’s perspective (using a lot of Parallels actually!)
Checking Firmware version
- Format the SD card in the camera.
- Put the SD card in a card reader and hook it up to your Mac.
- In TextWrangler or TextEdit, create a blank file called “ver.req” and save it onto the root of the SD card. Then reinsert the SD card back into the camera.
- Put the SD1000 in play mode and turn it on. Pressed the function set button + disp button, kind of like a ctrl+c, holding down the function set button while pressing the disp button. This will tell you what firmware version you’re using. Mine iss GM 1.02A.
Installing CHDK
- The firmware version let’s you know what CHDK build you can use. Luckily mine was available here: http://malbe.nm.ru/chdk/.
- Getting CHDK on the SD from a Mac seemed a little finicky, so I just used parallels to do it. Unzip the firmware on Parallels desktop then drop the two files, ps.fir and diskboot.bin, onto the SD card’s root.
- Reinsert the card into the camera, put the camera in play mode, and turn the camera on.
- Pressed the Menu button. Under the play tab, scroll to the bottom where the Firmware Update option is. Update the firmware, which will install the CHDK.
This update does not change the actual firmware. It just install itself into temporary memory. Once you turn it off and back on the hack is gone. But there is a way to have the hack auto boot.
Autobooting
- After following the Installing CHDK instructions above. Press the ALT button (called the print button with the led in the middle.) Then press the Menu button.
- Go to the Debug Parameters page and activate the Make Card Bootable.
- Turn off the camera and pull out the SD card.
- Move the lock switch on the SD to the lock mode.
- Reinsert the card. The SD1000 should now auto boot.
Locking the card doesn’t affect being able to record or delete pictures.
Some observations so far
- RAW is cool, but a pain for the Mac so far. I’ve been using DNG4PS-2 in parallels to convert the CRW files to Adobe DNG. The mac version doesn’t really work well in Leopard. It kept crashing on me. The converter is especially nice because it copies the exif data from the jpeg.
- Overriding shutter speeds is cool when you want to do high speed syncing.
- You can customize a User Menu with your most often used items.
- The On Screen Display is cool but annoying. You get a lot of extra information, but it doesn’t disappear in the “no information just the picture” display mode. You can also customize where overlays are displayed on the screen. Overlays also hover on top of most everything, so you have to be careful where you place them.
- You now have a battery level display all the time. Without the hack, the battery warning only pops up right before the battery dies.
- Live blended Histogram and Zebra (blinking blown highlights) displays are nice.
- Auto ISO customization doesn’t work.
- I can’t seem to get any Intervalometer scripts to work.
- The Motion Detector scripts work, but need some finessing to work reliably.
- Manual focus override works.
- There is a “hotkey” (ALT button, then the up button, then down button) that will set the camera’s focus to the hyperfocal distance and also display the range of acceptable focus (nearest distance within focus to infinity).
- There is no flash exposure compensation.
This is definitely a tinkerer’s delight. I spent way too much time trying to customize it than taking pictures with it.
10 Comments
Any luck getting an intervalometer to work? I spent a few hours last night to no avail.
I gave up also. I kept getting some kind of error, then a crash. And it looks like the person who wrote the scripts I was using has completely left the CHDK forum.
I bought a used A560 becuase it seems to work for Chuck Heron, but I haven’t given up on the SD1000 since Shannon Patrick posted some timelapse that he made with his. Good luck and please share any success you have. I’ll do the same.
How fast could you get your shutter working? When I tried the overide it said it was taking pictures at the speed I selected but when reviewing the exif information (using exiftool to get ALL the info) it listed target shutter speed as 1/1512th sec and that is the highest I could get. I had the factor set to 1 like I was supposed to an everything.
As for the motion detection script, what variables did you change in order to get it to work? Once I start the script it just keeps shooting for ever. I noticed on the script’s wiki page it says that if AE lock is on it will get stuck in a loop but I don’t know how to disable AE lock.
Hopefully you can shed some light, I’d appreciate it. If I find anything out I’ll let you know as well.
Thanks,
James
One more thing, you may be able to exploit my mistakes to work as an intervalometer. Since mine was getting stuck in a loop you may be able to increase the script delay to act as your desired interval.
Here is the script I was using (that now I realize is way too short compared to others I’ve seen)
e=e*100
f=f*1000
while 1
press “shoot_half”
rem for get_prop use 205 for DigicII and 206 for DigicIII
do
get_prop 206 p
until p=1
md_detect_motion a, b, h, f, d, c, 1, t, 0, 1, 1, a, b, i, g, e
if i=0 then click “shoot_full”
rem the next loop is endless if AE lock is activated, use 205 for DigiII
do
get_prop 206 p
until p1
wend
end
James H,
I have noticed the same 1/1,500 shutter speed exif data you mentioned. I didn’t think about it much and just added it to my SD1000-CHDK quirkiness mental list. In the chdk wiki, it states the max shutter speed achievable is 1/10,000. I haven’t confirmed the highest achievable shutter speed, but I have confirmed that the shutter speeds do go higher than the stated 1/1500.
This was my quick test (I hope it isn’t too flawed!):
I set the ND filter to “Out” in CHDK. This is actually very important when using manual shutter speeds otherwise you’ll get very random results (4 stops of difference because the camera will drop in the ND filter at random times!) I set the shutter speed to 1/1250 and value factor to 1 in CHDK. Took a picture outside. Then switched it to 1/2500 and took another picture etc. etc. etc… When I compared the pictures, the images got progressively darker. I’m not sure what the highest achievable shutter is, but I think it is at least a little bit higher than 1/10,000. I’ve read in the wiki that physical aperture size affects the highest speeds. I can understand that on leaf type shutter, but I’m not really sure why it would affect a CCD type shutter. The CCD is just turning on and off.
Regarding the motion detection. Part of this is from memory because I tried two different scripts. The first is lightning script: http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,459.0.html (looks like it is off the thread now). I think I set the trigger delay to 13 and didn’t get continuous shooting. Then I tried the more customizable one here: http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,518.0.html (script is also missing it appears). The trigger delay that worked for me sort of was 40. I think it really depends on the lighting of what you’re shooting. I need to experiment more with this. I just wanted to try it to see if it would even work. I haven’t really used the script though for shooting anything worthwhile.
Thanks for the info Edmond. I was able to get the motion detection script working but so far haven’t tweaked it to get any worthwhile speeds (there is about a second or two delay from the motion event and the picture) but at least its running now. As for the shutter speeds I took a skillsaw that was supposed to run at 5300 RPM and I shot it at a 1/6400 shutter speed, the center of the 7″ blade was stationary but the outside edges were blurred so that tells me it wasn’t fast enough. I tried another similar test with a 1/100k speed and got similar results but it was on a different piece of equipment and we didn’t know the rpm.
I’ll play around some more and see what I can figure out. It would be interesting if someone devised a script that fires the camera off of an auditory trigger via the microphone (ie a balloon popping). I’ve seen some trigger circuits that do this but they have to use a pitch black room and rely on the fast flash for the sharp exposure, if CHDK could do it via a script and have a flash synched 1/10000s exposure that could yield some very interesting shots.
James H,
Thanks for testing that out! I unfortunately don’t have many power tools to test this with except for a rechargeable power drill, but that probably wouldn’t be the most accurate test! Were you able to get the angle of motion blur on the spinning skilsaw?
The auditory trigger definitely sounds like an interesting script.
I got the intervalometer script ult_intrvl.bas to work on my SD1000, firmware GM1.02A.
It didn’t require any revisions. The weird thing, so far, is that for shooting daylight scenes it only works when in M(anual). For some reason when it’s in A(uto) it stops. Anybody have any idea about this?
Thanks,
John
I’m not positive but I think it is because of the commands it uses for the “shoot half” and “shoot full”, in manual mode you can lock the AE and focus but in automode I think its different.
I just loaded this script today and I too was able to get it working without modification to the script. I did however find that I couldn’t get shots any faster than about 1 every 3 seconds and I’m not sure why. The built in one (movie mode> timelapse) will take a shot every 1″ but you’re limited to 640×480. I think the camera’s burst mode is 1.3 FPS so theoretically it should be faster than what I’m able to get.
I used a guerilla pod to fix the camera to my rearview mirror and get some interesting time lapses while driving. I want to try this again but with longer shutter speeds so all of the car headlights are streaking. I’m really digging this little point and shoot, so much power packed into a little camera now that CHDK has come out.