Battle of the Hardware-Boosting Hacks

When like-minded hackers come together to unleash the true power of seemingly simple gear, it’s truly a beautiful thing. We’ve featured a good number of how-tos and hacks over the years that make expensive upgrades unnecessary and unleash seriously cool features in your gear, and 2008 was no exception. In the last year our Canon digi-cams gained pro-level powers:

Canon Hacker’s Development Kit

If you’ve ever been intrigued by time-lapse photography, motion-sensing shutters that can capture lightning, or being able to shoot videos of any serious length, you might not need to shell out for a semi-serious DSLR model—if you’ve got a Canon, that is. The CHDK lets you do all that and more, including record your photos in the very work-able RAW format, get way more on-screen information about your shots and their settings, and, as Adam put it, generally turn your point-and-shoot into a super-camera. The possibilities are vast, given the number of user-created scripts the CHDK can run. And, in true hacker fashion, you can even play a game or two on your LCD screen (while you pretend to be setting up that staged photo mom and dad want, perhaps).