I trashed a Canon Powershot A610 camera during a bike tour in spring, so I bought its successor, an A650. I still prefered the A610 over the A650 for some details. Due to it’s better resolution (5 vs. 12.1 mpx) the latter just blows your hard drive while being even more clumsy than the A610. Anyway, both cameras are good in taking pictures even in low-light circumstances, and I don’t want to miss the flap display both have to offer. The automatic modes do a marvellous job. If those fail, the cameras still provide the possibility to adjust both shutter speed and aperture manually. I’d call this “best of both worlds”.
Both devices, however, lack two important things: A battery level indicator and (much more useful) a live histogram.
Fortunately, there’s some community software which brings such desirable features to your Canon camera: CHDK. There’s a (german) board which provides more details. Drunkentech.com shares detailed knowledge how to install it using a Mac, Linux User how to do it on Linux (german language).
Set the SD card to read-only mode via its “hardware” switch to use CHDK. Boot it and switch to play mode, then press the Alt button, then the menu button to reach the new features.
If you are fed up, just set the SD card to RW and boot again. This way you can just use the original, untainted firmware.
Enough for today. I’ll play with the new features another day.
