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

1. Format the SD card in the camera.
2. Put the SD card in a card reader and hook it up to your Mac.
3. 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.
4. 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

1. The firmware version let’s you know what CHDK build you can use. Luckily mine was available here: http://malbe.nm.ru/chdk/.
2. 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.
3. Reinsert the card into the camera, put the camera in play mode, and turn the camera on.
4. 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

1. 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.
2. Go to the Debug Parameters page and activate the Make Card Bootable.
3. Turn off the camera and pull out the SD card.
4. Move the lock switch on the SD to the lock mode.
5. 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.