Help: talk pages, talk page guidelines
Share your concerns and ideas.
Should there be more extenive documentation for each feature?
Would we need a more extensive explanation on the use of the various histograms for people new to using them?
For example: I recently found how very handy the color histograms can be just for testing and setting the "My Colors" feature. I couldn't understand why I was getting so many over-exposure warnings even though I set my Contrast to -2. Come to find out I had left Saturation on a +1 setting. This was showing up on the color graphs going out of bounds all too often. I set Saturation back to zero and most all the warnings went away. Nice!
> Would we need a more extensive explanation on the use of the various histograms for people new to using them?
Yeah, why not? Or maybe just a link? I like this explanation of histograms: http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/histograms/histograms.htm
I like the new pictures very much. It would also be nice to have a picture where you can see the new Zebra mode in action (=active zebra shadows/highlights, possibly combined with a (blended) histogram overlay). Unfortunately I have no second camera to do this myself.
- Harvester
New Firmware Usage Page
Harvester, did you do all that??
If so (or whoever did it) ... WOW! NICE!
<insert smiley-happy-face thingy here>
This whole CHDK Wikia is rivaling most user manuals that I've read!!
~Keo~
No, I think it was GrAnd. Amazing work, thank you very much for all the nice pics!
- Harvester
Now that's one busy guy! I'm askeered to go see what tonight's firmware update might have. It means editing the pages again. :-) (hopefully he found something more fun to do for the weekend)
~Keo~
I've read here many postings about the S3 shortcut bug. I tried to include the workaround into this Wiki. Since I don't have a S3, I might have gotten something wrong... please correct me then!
- Harvester
Looks okay to me. I still like holding down the [Flash/Audio-memo] button before I press for ALT though. If I don't then when I run a script when I press the shutter it changes my shortcut settings. I think there's enough info there to let folks figure it out, and to at least alert them to a work-around that they can learn.
~Keo~
Suggested Fonts for the File Reader
I have been using that RBF Font Converter program to see what fonts are the most legible for the teeny tiny screens we have to deal with, and I stumbled on a really nice one tonight.
If you have one on your system called "MS Reference Sans Serif" it converts extremely well. It's the most legible font I've found so far (at least I think so). It works well in point sizes from as low as 9 and 9 bold up to 13 and 13 bold. Beyond that it gets a little too large, not enough text displayed on the screen for my tastes. 10 is on the small side, but still useful. 10 bold, 11, and 11 bold are nice. 9 if you really must have as much on the screen at once, but it'll take some practice to read it, 9 bold is pretty easy to read.
Anyway, just a heads-up on a nice font
Text-only Version
Oh, this text-only version is a very nice idea! I have not tried it yet, but it definitly sounds very useful!
- Harvester
I cleaned out as many line-feeds as possible, so it'll format a little better in the File Reader. And put in "------" section headings throughout so it might be easier to scroll to the area of interest by just using the zoom-in/out controller to scroll by pages, easier to spot the sections.
If you change something in the main Wiki - Firmware Usage pages, feel free to re-edit that file again and post it again somewhere easy to download. There might be places where some superfluous text could be removed too to make it more succinct.
I just wanted to say what a great job everyone has done with this WIKI. I still want to help ,,,but I'm so busy right now I can't. Thanks,Don
Erase All -- Bug or Wonderful Feature?
I noticed something interesting today with my S3 IS.
I have CHDK installed on a 4gig card, so it means I have to manually boot up CHDK when needed. I was experimenting with taking some RAW files today. I know from the past that when you use the camera's built-in "Erase All" feature that it would leave the RAW files behind (when I was using 2gig self-booting SD cards, write-protect locked).
Well, I noticed that if just after boot up. and then loading CHDK, if I went to the camera's "Erase All" feature, that it would delete the whole 10x_CANON" folder, RAW files included.
However, if I took some RAW files in one session, then shut off the camera, started it again, took some more RAW files, and THEN when to the "Erase All" function, it would leave 1 behind from the previous (or current?) session. (I didn't pay attention to file numbers, I only know when I used CHDK's file-browser that the 10x_CANON folder was still there and one RAW file in it.)
Anyway, instead of going into CHDK's file-browser menu, I found I could just get rid of all the old files after a clean boot using "Erase All". This might be a quirk of using the 4gig card without the SD card-lock enabled or something.
I am using a RAW filename format of IMG_xxx.CR2 if that's of any importance. I changed it to see if other RAW file programs could read the files. This could be some rudimentary code in Canon's camera firmware that's recognizing their own CR2 RAW-file extension and allowing the deletion of them.
Thought you might like to know. And also in case you are hoping to save all your RAW files by using "Erase All" to get rid of the JPG files, that under some circumstances you might erase the RAW files too. :)
- Camera can delete all files with the same number at once. For example, if you make audio comment for a picture 'IMG_1234.JPG', camera creates sound file 'SND_1234.WAV'. If you decide to erase file 'IMG_1234.JPG', the complementary sound file will be deleted as well. For some RAW-files extensions camera behaviour is the same.
- BUT! Camera does not see any RAW files until you switch off/on the camera. If camera recognises that complementary RAW file exists the icon "broken sound file" will be displayed near a file number in play mode.
- -- GrAnd 19:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC) --
Hyperfocal Manual-Focus Tip (S3 IS):
I notice that I am limited to the number of manual focus-steps depending on what setting my zoom lens is at. This can make it difficult to take full advantage of the exact hyper-focal distance read-out from CHDK.
The S3 IS has a nice little manual focus assist feature. That once you are in manual focus and did your best with the UP and DOWN buttons to focus your subject, you can press the SET button to let the camera try to auto fine-tune that focus for you even more. The feature limits itself to search for a better focus within a very narrow range.
I've noticed in the past that if it can't lock on something strong in contrast to focus on, that it will gradually step outward in very small increments to INF(inity).
SO ... if you are ever in need of trying to get closer to the hyper-focal distance, once you have locked your camera into manual focus: Try to get as close to the required hyper-focal distance as possible with the UP and DOWN buttons. Then aim the camera at something low in contrast (the sky perhaps), and press your SET button. Then HALF-press the shutter button to see what the new manual (F) focus distance is. (CHDK doesn't seem to update the F number during manual focus steps in latest versions of it, so you have to half-press the shutter button to make it update the (F) display number.)
If you haven't gotten close enough to the Hyper-focal distance, then press SET again (while pointed at a low-contrast area), it will make one more micro-focus step toward infinity for you.
Repeat until you are at the focus distance you wanted.
OR, conversely, scan around with your camera in auto-focus mode until it locks on something at the hyper-focal distance and then hit the MF button to lock it in. Sometimes finding something the right distance isn't always available, like when out on a boat for example or a busy crowd. Then resort to the manual-focus + SET button routine.
CHDK Wish-List
I've read some posts that had some good ideas, and found some things that I too would like to see CHDK have in the future. Even though CHDK is already a remarkable advancement/improvement, there's always room for more. :)
Suggestions / Wishes:
A uBASIC script command to click the "Movie Record" button on the S3 IS.
A uBASIC script command to trigger audio-only recordings.
A uBASIC script command for "zoom_to", where you could set it to quickly zoom to a numerical step. The "zoom_in" and "zoom_out" commands are very slow to run in steps.
The histogram having a small grid to show full f/stop regions.
How about an alternate rule-of-thirds grid for the golden ratio.
The time display to show AM or PM for us North Americans. :-) To save space it could be just a dot next to the 12-hour number for PM, it's how lots of clocks do it, we're used to that.
Focus distance and hyperfocal readings to reflect the feet/inches setting of the camera instead of just metric. (some of us still can't wrap our minds around metric estimates, we're old and gray. :) )
More colors to choose from for customizing features, so many are just repeats. And being able to use some of the transparent ones for special effect filters. How about a built-in transparent gray gradient for those over-exposed skies and under-exposed foregrounds?
An audio record-level meter during movie and audio recording modes that shows clipping. (now that would be so cool)
I like OwenJim's rebuilds of CHDK, where I'm able to keep the Blend Histogram showing at all times, as well as removing some redundant info, like the SCR and EXP alerts. The truncated Hyperfocal display option is nice too, but it's nice to have the fuller info displayed at times too.
What do you think? Are any of these worth considering for future projects?
And a bug that needs fixing for the S3 IS builds, the Focal-distance doesn't update in Manual Focus, MF, mode like it used to. You have to half-press the shutter to get it to refresh the F value each time you change manual focus.
Text reader - spaces between characters
I've noticed a problem in the text reader which concerns the spaces between characters. They are not all the same, so sometimes it looks as if you have a space char where there should not be any. The problems appears on my A610(e) and all fonts seem to have it, but at different positions. Let's take Arial20b.rbf here as an example: I have distinct spaces before every "j" and "y" and "Y" so that they look like " j", " y", " Y". If you want to test this, copy the following stuff into a text file and open it with your camera:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
______
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
______
zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbazyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbazyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba
______
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
______
0123456789098765432101234567890987654321012345678909876543210
______
a.a,a;a!a?a:a-a_a.a,a;a!a?a:a-a_a
Answer: These spaces are in font files. The files are needed to be edited manually, because RBF-font editor imports from TTF fonts slightly incorrect (various spacing issue).
You can edit them with rbfEditor. This program is quite simple to use, but I severely miss an "undo" function. So better save from time to time :)
Here you can find space corrected versions of the Arial_bold fonts.