The video functions of small cameras are often overlooked by photographers. We take photographs, not video clips, right? Well, with the CHDK activated you may change your mind. Video sequences are quite memory-hungry. That is the reason why the camera compresses all video frames. Doing so saves a large amount of memory but also reduces [...]

The CHDK Edge Overlay function is able to extract the edges from an image as soon as you half-press the shutter button and overlay the resulting diagram with the current content of the display. This allows viewing the previous shot and the current shot in context, making it easy to register images and apply techniques [...]

Depth of Field (DOF) is often a problem in photography. Only a distance range within the image is sharp, while objects outside that area are blurred. In particular, telephoto shots, macro work, and tabletop photography are hampered by this problem. The traditional remedy is to stop down (or, in the case of view camera and [...]

High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Dynamic Range Increase (DRI) Photography have become quite popular among digital photographers. Both techniques are used for recording contrast ranges that are beyond the maximum contrast range of a state-of-art camera sensor [Howard2008][Bloch2007]. Photographic scenes — especially those in full sunlight—can have a dynamic range of 16 to 25 Light [...]

Setting up the camera for an unlimited series of bracketing shots is very easy under the CHDK. Just go to the Bracketing submenu and set the values for the entries found there: To enable bracketing, you must also set Disable Overrides in the submenu Extra Photo Operations to Off (section 4.3.1) if you enabled the [...]

Bracketing is a camera function that produces a series of photos with varying settings. Traditionally, bracketing was used to obtain an image with perfect exposure. First, an image with the measured exposure was made, then an image half an f-stop overexposed, then an image half an f-stop underexposed, then the same with a full f-stop. [...]

The possibilities don’t stop with the RAW processing discussed in section 4.5.5. The context menu of the file browser (see section 4.10.1) opens a whole new world of addititional RAW processing options. You can reach the file browser through alt >menu >Miscellaneous Stuff> File Browser or alt > menu > RAW Parameters > RAW Develop. [...]

You don’t necessarily need a PC to process RAW files. With the CHDK it is possible to develop RAW files within the camera. The selected RAW file will be converted into a JPEG file. Why should you do this? The advantage is that you can apply some processing parameters after a shot has been taken, [...]

Many photo editors such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Picture Window, and so on can import RAW images. And then there are the specialized, work-flow-oriented RAW developers such as Aperture, Lightroom, CaptureOne, Helicon Filter, BreezeBrowser, SilkyPix, DxO, RawTherapee, and others. These programs have highly specialized tools for developing RAW images. Many lens and sensor imperfections—such [...]

RAW files saved by the CHDK are not equipped with EXIF data (DNG files are). This sounds like a drawback because EXIF data are very useful for processing and archiving images. Vital information such as exposure time, aperture, ISO speed, focal length, distance, etc., would be missing without the EXIF data. But because the CHDK [...]

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