I’ve been really excited to see what I can do with my photography and digital video, so I decided that today would be the day I would get the Canon Hacker’s Development Kit working on my already awesome Canon SD750 camera.  After my initial research, I discovered that there is finally a beta version of the CHDK for the SD750.  It came out last month, so I have perfect timing!  Here are just some of the functionality the CHDK adds (from the CHDK wiki, which was my main resource for this installation):

• Shooting in RAW, with RAW Average, RAW Sum, and RAW Develop features
• Live histogram (RGB, blended, luminance and for each RGB channel)
• Zebra mode (live-view under/over-exposure subject-area alerts)
• DOF-calculator, Hyperfocal-calculator with instant Hyperfocal and Infinity focus-set, and more
• Battery indicator
• RAW and Video space-remaining gauges with custom low-limit alerts
• Scripts execution (exposure/focus/bracketing, intervalometer and more)
• USB-cable remote shutter-release
• Motion-Detection triggered photography (fast enough to capture lightning strikes)
• Customizable high-speed continuous (burst) Tv, Av, ISO, and Focus bracketing (unlimited shots)
• 99 constant bit-rate and 10 constant-quality video compression levels
• 1 Gig video-size limit removed in earlier cameras
• Zoom during video for cameras without
• Shutter, Aperture, and ISO Overrides (shutter speeds of 64″ to 1/10,000″ and higher)
• High-speed Flash Sync at all speeds up to 1/64,000 second (even faster in some cameras)
• Custom framing, cropping, and alignment viewfinder Grids (user editable)
• File browser
• Text reader
• Calendar
• Some fun tools and games

Keep in mind that the installation methods for Mac and Windows are very different.  I completed my CHDK installation with the help of my G4 iBook and an SD card reader.

Before I could even download the beta CHDK, the first thing I needed to do was determine the firmware installed on my camera.  This will help you determine which CHDK to download.  Thankfully there are very detailed instructions.  Read on for my experience with the CHDK installation.

To determine the firmware on your camera, you have to create an empty text file called ver.req and put it in the root directory of your camera’s SD card.  I used TextEdit to create my text file.  I opened a new file, went to the Format menu and selected Make Plain Text (it opened in Rich Text Format), and then selected Save from the File menu.  It is important when you save the empty file that you make sure that you change the plain text encoding from UTF-8 to UTF-16 and that you uncheck the If not extension is provided, use .txt checkbox.  Your Save window should look something like this.  Don’t forget to put it in the root directory of your memory card!

It should be noted that it is a lot easier to save files to your memory card and get CHDK to work when you use a card reader versus plugging your camera in to your computer.  This is recommended by the CHDK wiki because sometimes the camera can be very finicky if you’re using it to transfer the CHDK files and get them working.

Once I got the ver.req file transferred over, I started the camera up in playback mode by pressing the playback button on the back of the camera.  Then, I held down the FUNC SET button while pressing the DISP button.  However, instead of seeing the firmware version as I had expected, I saw a blank screen with a stylized clock on it.  Never fear–this can happen with certain cameras and the ver.req file.  This just means that the particular camera needs a file called vers.req instead!  I popped my SD card back into the card reader, renamed the file, and returned it to the camera.  I held down FUNC SET and DISP again, and the camera informed me I was running firmware version 1.02A.

After checking the wiki page for the SD750, I downloaded the correct version of the CHDK beta for my camera.  For some reason, the ZIP file for my firmware was called filename.zip.zip.  When I saved it as-is, I could not unarchive it even when I renamed it to be filename.zip.  So, I deleted it and tried again, this time saving it as filename.zip during my download, which worked perfectly.  I unarchived the zip using Stuffit Expander–one important thing of note in the wiki is that the Archive Utility in Leopard 10.5 locks down files downloaded from the Internet to not run unless you do some complicated things in the Terminal.  If you use a utility such as The UnArchiver or Stuffit Expander, you don’t have the problem.  Stuffit unarchived two files: DISKBOOT.BIN and PS.FIR.  I copied both files to the root of my SD card, ejected it from my Mac and then installed the card back into my camera.

To get the CHDK running on my camera, I again started the camera up in playback mode and then pressed the MENU button.  I scrolled all the way down to the bottom and selected the Firm Update… entry from the menu.  The camera rebooted itself, and voila! CHDK is now running on my camera.  The great thing about CHDK is that it doesn’t actually overwrite your camera’s firmware.  Unless you set it up to load automatically upon startup (more on this process later), you just load it into the camera memory every time you turn your camera on by following the steps I described above.  Now, if I can just figure out these fancy new features on my camera…

If you’re interested in installing CHDK on your Canon camera, you can check for a CHDK version for your model here on the CHDK Wiki and click on the link for your model for more information.

Next up–using the CHDK!