S3 IS and A-Series RAW Hack?

[Keoeeit]

(deleted)

http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK for pointers to the firmware.

[Majarvis]

Sounds pretty good. I'll wait for others to try it and report back here first before I give it a shot myself.

[_aravena]

Disappears as soon as you turn it off? doesnt stay so i cant format that card ever? gotta keep it on there? hm...

Sounds nice and Ive seen such things before for phones. Ive always waited till they cleaned the bugs out though.

[DanteCaspian]

Makes me curious, but like others, I'll wait too.

[JustShootin']

My S2 has a few more bells and whitsles on it now than it really needs. For instance, a shutter sound that sounds like a dog barking. Nah, I don't need a hack!

[Keoeeit]

Originally Posted by _aravena

Disappears as soon as you turn it off?

Only on the S3 IS so far, they've not got a work-around working for that yet. It auto-boots into the hack for all A-series cameras if you follow the auto-boot info above.

Originally Posted by _aravena

doesnt stay so i cant format that card ever?

Sure you can! I keep a nice little <1meg folder of the 2 important files needed on my hard-drive. (Plus all the scripts I've collected and the extensive set of fonts to use when they get the text-reader working on the S3. Heh, it even has an auto-scroll feature so you can read an e-book without touching the camera). While testing it to see if I could get the auto-boot thing to work I reformatted my card a few times to try some things. I just drag and drop that folder of hack-files from my hard-drive to the SD card after a format.

Originally Posted by _aravena

gotta keep it on there? hm...

No, you don't have to keep it on there. Use if if you want, delete it if you want. It's just some extra files to put on any SD card you have.

Originally Posted by _aravena

Sounds nice and Ive seen such things before for phones. Ive always waited till they cleaned the bugs out though.

What an adventurer.

Found some neat shortcuts just a few moments ago. For example: you don't have to go into the [alt] menus to enable/disable the RAW file saving feature. It appears he reassigned some buttons from the A640 defaults to new ones on the S3 IS. The RAW toggle was pretty sneaky, but I found it!

[Keoeeit]

Originally Posted by JustShootin'

My S2 has a few more bells and whitsles on it now than it really needs. For instance, a shutter sound that sounds like a dog barking. Nah, I don't need a hack!

If you use the utilities that came on the CD, you can even have it shout your own voice, assign any WAV files you want to any of the camera events. There's lots of them on the CD that are a little more entertaining or interesting than those that come on the camera. (I prefer to shoot mute, things like that only scare the wildlife. But a toilet-flush sound or applause for the shutter could be fun at a party.)

They haven't done the hack for the S2 anyway (yet).

[Keoeeit]

Well, this is pretty cool. The S3 IS hack may still be crippled a bit (not having all the bugs out of it for the S3 yet), but after a little testing and experimenting I found out it still accepts some of its original default structures. Namely, any file that's called "script.bas" and put in the root directory of your SD card is read into the hack as its default script. So even if you can't select a bunch of scripts from a folder (the way it works on other models of Canon cameras already) you can still edit (or rename) one script and put it on the card and still have it work.

I've been in dire need of a focus-bracketing system that goes far beyond the one that's built into S3 IS. So I tweaked one of the other "exposure bracketing" scripts someone wrote to make it work for "focus-bracketing". With this I can have as many exposures/steps as I want with as much change between each step as I want. When doing some extreme macros I found it near to impossible to get usable focus-bracket steps out of S3's defaults, not enough change between each focus step. This fixes ALL of that!

[edited on 2007-04-25 c.e.]

Please see the CHDK Wikia uBASIC Scripting Page for further info on this script, in the User Written Scripts section.

[end edit]

One caveat, don't leave your camera's built-in exposure or focus bracketing turned on, or you'll get 3 exposures for every one of the shots defined in this script. I made that silly mistake when trying to figure this all out. Come to think of it though, how cool would that be to leave the "exposure bracketing" turned on while this is also running. Then I can do HD macro images with immense depths of field. (The possibilities this opens up are many.)

Also, be sure when starting out to leave enough available in-focus to allow for as many steps and distance as you've chosen. Meaning, don't bottom-out your manual focus at the closest in-focus spot, or there's no place for the script to focus in closer as it's running. And conversely don't start out at infinity, or there's no place for the lens to focus past that. It won't hurt anything if you do, you'll just not get those focus steps closer or further than the camera's limits. No different than if you held down the "up" or "down" control button while holding the MF button. The focusing mechanism just stops when it hits its limits.

This is *so* freakin' cool! I'll be able to automate nearly all the features of my S3, far beyond anything Canon set for its crippled limits.

[raimisch]

Well I have been using the RAW standalone hack for awhile, and have tried out this new one, and from what I have been able to figure out with it, it is very nice, I really like the battery charge part. Very handy, still havent figured out the differance between the normal histogram and the one in the hack, lots to fool around with this hack. I just have one question with regards to the raw hack portion. How can I convert them into a format that photoshop will reconize? I can't seem to figure out the command to use with dcraw. Any help is appreciated in this, Thank you.

[Keoeeit]

Suh-weet!!

He already fixed all the bugs in the S3 IS version. New file uploaded just now, same file-name. Dated for the 16th.

The "Zebra" mode isn't what I thought it was. No zebra lines. But it DOES overlay your view with flashing-red wherever there's blown-out highlights. WAY COOL. Now if he could do the clipping at the shadows end too. No doubt they'll do that. Zebra mode takes precedence over the 6 different RGB-Y Histograms though, you can't have both. I hope I can find a short-cut key to toggle between the two, both are very very useful.

All scripting, file-browsing, *most* everything works. Well, it still won't auto-boot into the hack, but that's no different than the original RAW-only feature from long ago. On the super-upside, it saves ALL your settings between boots.

I'm going to have to start selecting some e-books I've not read and make an "e-books" folder on my SD card. How's that for a travel-buddy? Complete library PLUS digital camera? I swear it don't get sweeter than this. (Did you know you can fit 2000 to 5000 e-books in a gig of space? I'll have to get an extra SD card just for a portable library now.) Download all those *.rbf fonts from http://grandag.nm.ru/hdk/fonts/ if you'd like to select a more pleasing font for reading your auto-scrolling e-books. Put them in a /fonts/ folder on your SD card.

I found a few hints for those of you too timid to explore on your own:

Short-cut Keys:

{ALT] + Zoom-Out = Toggle RAW File Saving (If you have show RAW/SCR/EXP option set in OSD parameters, then it'll show you when you are in RAW mode on your display.)

To toggle {ALT] on and off without having it change your Shortcut button option: hold down the Flash/Microphone button (left of flash unit) while pressing your Shortcut button. I'm sure other button combos will work but that seems convenient to just use a ready finger on my left-hand while pressing the Shortcut button.

If you forget to boot up into the GrAnde Hack mode, or want to enable the hack after you are well into some shooting session, just move your "Mode Lever" to "View Mode" twice (same as how you retract the zoom to just go into playback-only mode normally), then use the Menu button / "Firm Update" as you would normally when powering-up to enable it.

If you want the scripts selection to auto-find your scripts without having to browse the card, put them in a /scripts/ folder. (right off the root directory of your SD card)

Looks like he's going to have some problems with the DOF calculator display, he's working on that now, as there's 129 optical-zoom steps in the S3 IS compared to 17 zoom-steps for the A-series models. He's trying to find something to make the proper math conversions.

To those of you who are too afraid to test this hack -- YOUR loss.

[Keoeeit]

Originally Posted by raimisch

Well I have been using the RAW standalone hack for awhile, and have tried out this new one, and from what I have been able to figure out with it, it is very nice, I really like the battery charge part. Very handy, still havent figured out the differance between the normal histogram and the one in the hack, lots to fool around with this hack. I just have one question with regards to the raw hack portion. How can I convert them into a format that photoshop will reconize? I can't seem to figure out the command to use with dcraw. Any help is appreciated in this, Thank you.

Go here: http://digicanon.narod.ru/

And read the section: "How-To convert RAW shots to dng"

Or ... use PhotoLine-32 (www.pl32.com) for your editor. I like it better than PhotoShop anyway, it does so much more. And it also loads up the RAW files from this hack without having to convert one thing. If not using the more extensive options from File / Import / Digital Camera RAW Data, You can also open them up in PL32 by just double-clicking on a RAW file right in Windows Explorer -- if you set your PL32's RAW file options to a gamma of 2.20 first. (Edit / Options / File / RAW ...) Set your Window's file-association for the RAW file-type extension that you use in the GrAnde Hack. You can also use Raw Therapee from http://www.rawtherapee.com/ An extremely excellent freeware RAW editor. (but it runs painfully slow on some computers when using some features, they're worth the wait)

[nniemik]

Other than RAW availbility, what is new in this hack for the A-series camera? Is there the battery % display? Histogram? Bracketing, for the A series?

[Keoeeit]

Originally Posted by nniemik

Other than RAW availbility, what is new in this hack for the A-series camera? Is there the battery % display? Histogram? Bracketing, for the A series?

All of the above, and about 50 things more. Special bracketing modes available with the scripting feature. Get all the scripts you can find by following links, as I did. Heck, I'll just zip up my scripts collection and put it on this post.

You won't believe all the goodies you have available now. Try it.

[Keoeeit]

Scripts Caution!

I just realized something. While the scripting language for this hack is very very simple (the commands just engage the known buttons that you can press manually), there are some commands that could prove potentially harmful if you run a script without looking at it first in a text editor (use NotePad or whatever). If the script uses the "menu" command it is possible to have it delete your photos on the card by pressing the right sequence of up, down, left, right controls.

I'm sure some idiot is going to try that now that I said this. (To be forewarned it to be forearmed.) But it's so easy to read the simple scripts and follow right along what buttons and commands are being pressed and in what sequence. So ... just read ANY new script you might run, to see if it might be doing something you don't want it to do.

Look to see how the "menu" and "erase" buttons might be being use in any of the scripts. So far I've not seen any malicious use of this code in the scripts I collected. It's not to say it won't happen soon though, you know how those kids are. Or those who are jealous of someone else's camera.

I just tried something ... it appears that you can't run a script while in "View" mode, where options like "Erase All ..." are available. This doesn't mean that the erase button might not be called up while in quick-preview during shooting though.

Just something to watch out for in the future if someone is making scripts available or giving you a new one they just wrote that claims to butter-your-toast too. Feel free to check out all the ones in that zip-pack I posted too. None are harmful, but it'll give you a quick view into how they work, and ... how to write you own! That's the best part.

Here's a list of available scripting commands if you want to write your own:

== uBASIC Syntax short manual ==

Keywords: let, if, then, else, for, to, next, goto, gosub, return, end.

Special keywords: click, shoot, sleep.

Variables: lower latin letter from a to z. 16 bit signed integer.

Labels: This version of ubasic doesn't support line numbers.
Instead, labels are used. A label must be the only statement
in a line and start with a colon.

Special keywords syntax:
* click "button_name"
where button_name can be one of: up, down, left, right, set, shoot_half,
shoot_full, zoom_in, zoom_out, menu, display, print, erase.
Corresponding button is "clicked" (pressed and released).

* shoot
Take a picture. Procedure will return when first raw data
will be ready for processing _and_ specified time in menu had
elapsed. Warning: as two "raws" are there when shooting with
long exposures this function is partially broken.

* sleep <number>
Delay for <number> ms. Timer resolution is around 10-30 ms.

Keep in mind that for the S3 IS there are some command-name differences: the "Print" button is your "Shortcut" button, and "Erase" is your "Function" button. (Please correct this if I'm wrong, but I'm almost 100% certain that's how they convert from the A-series cameras to the S3.)

[raimisch]

Keoeeit, I had to keep bothering you with questions, but you seem to be the most knowledgeable person on the the newer hacks for the s3, besides the person who is doing them. Have you heard of anyway to be able to get zoom blur with any scripts?