Hack your Canon camera with its CHDK boot-file

Audio nut and thoriated tungsten aficionado Richard King just sent a cool link to a site that helps you add features to your Canon digital camera by replacing or installing a boot-file in the memory card. This CHDK file is totally reversible—just take it off the card and the camera boots up normally. You can get some pro-SLR features from a point and shoot— Richard explains:

I’ve had some more time to tinker with the "new" features that the CHDK hack includes. The list of new features is *very* extensive. The feature can be broken down into several categories thus:
Camera Status:
    -Battery state (%)
    -Lens data (35mm eqv. zoom, Focus distance)
Image data:
    -dynamic histogram (including options for Y, Y+RGB, RGB, YRGB)
    -dynamic "zebra striping" for over/under exposure
    -depth of field calculation
Camera function:
    -RAW/JPEG image storage (RAW, RAW+JPEG, JPEG)
    -extended shutter speed options (from minutes to 1/50000th sec; no, that’s not a typo!)
    -extended flash speed options (down to 1/60000th sec.)
    -exposure bracketing (’n’ shots by ‘m’ steps)
    -focus bracketing (focal depth by ‘n’ steps); darkroom software allows construction of images that have infinite depth of field!
    -alternative (lossier) video compression permitting up to 40 minutes of video at 640×480x30fps vs. only 7 min.
Misc.:
    -File browser
    -Text viewer
    -games (!)

The hack doesn’t offer much in-camera processing, which is best done in the digital darkroom anyway. I am currently using Adobe’s professional photo manager program ‘Lightroom’ and their digital darkroom program ‘Photoshop’ so in-camera processing would be of minimal interest to me anyway.

Anyhow the whole idea that my high end point’n’shoot can do what typically was reserved for the DSLRs is quite nice. It’s interesting to note that Canon maintains that the S3 is not capable of RAW image storage despite it’s existence which came about from 3rd party hacks using Canon’s own SDK! It’s clear to me that Canon has segmented their product offering reserving certain features/functions for their high end even though their low end product is functionally capable. BTW the ultra high shutter speed capability offered in the hack is apparently not available in the DSLR due the way the shutter function is implemented. What irony!

So for all you Canon fans, feel free to try out the hack and let us know what you think.