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).

Canon 5D Mark II Reviewed: Lives Up to the Incredible Hype

Pop Photo is one of the first to pop out a full review of Canon’s wunderkamera, the 5D Mark II, and says that it "does live up to its billing" and is "a virtual steal."

The image quality, thankfully, is as good as we’d been led to believe, delivering the huge megapixel count of Sony’s A900 and matches the clean images of Nikon’s D700, both scoring 2.0 in Pop Photo’s noise test at ISO 6400. In other words, "Such high resolution and ISOs will change your photography." Video footage is "beautiful" (though we already knew that).

The bad? The most crippling issue is that its autofocus system is sloooow, lagging way behind the D700 and A900, and it’s even worse in low light. Pop Photo also encountered the notorious black botches plaguing some of the camera’s shots with blown-out highlights, but they suspect it’ll be fixed with a firmware update.

Their bottom line is that "it’s a wow" and "low-light image quality is almost life-changing." Even if you already own a 5D, you gain on almost every front, so it’s a "perhaps irresistible" upgrade. Be sure to check out the full review: [Pop Photo]

Nikon: Want to know where a photo was taken? A GPS for Your Camera Can Show Where You Were

Taking a photo of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower is no longer proof enough of your travels. Nikon’s GP-1 GPS unit lets you “geotag” your photos by attaching to the hot shoe of your Nikon camera (models D3, D300, D700, D2Xs, D200 and D90 D-SLR) or to the strap, with an adaptor.

The dongle, measuring 2 by 1.8 by 1 inch, records latitude, longitude, altitude and time. You can upload photos using Nikon’s ViewNX software and “my Picturetown” photo storage and sharing Web site, or use third-party sites like Flickr and Google Earth.

The GP-1 acquires a satellite signal in about 45 seconds (after being turned on) or 5 seconds (if already powered). The system’s three-color status indicator flashes red when no recorded GPS satellite data is available. If the indicator blinks green, it has detected three satellites; a solid green signal means it has detected four or more.

The GP-1 will be available this month for the recession-unfriendly price of $240. You may have to make do with that untagged photo of the Eiffel Tower for a while. AZADEH ENSHA

Canon will address 5D Mark II’s “Black Dot” Issues soon

Though not as serious as the Mark III’s auto-focus disaster, the black dots are persistent on the new Canon 5D squeal. Frustrated photographers took it up with USA technical adviser Chuck Westfall at The Digital Journalist and the man spoke, “Watch for an official Canon comment on this issue in the very near future”

RG, in his brief interview with Westfall, also confirmed Canon is prepping to address the 5D mark II’s black dots debacle that’ve been widely spread on numerous community forums. No further details were disclosed but it would be a positive announcement. Well, if they’ve learned anything from Mark III; it’s wiser to break silence on founded technical difficulties, another case of lack-of-response could be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Canon EOS 50D

Product summary

Canon EOS 50D

Manufacturer: Canon USA

Part Number: 2807B006

CNET editors’ take

• By: Lori Grunin
• Published on: 08/25/2008

(Credit: Canon USA)

Bringing another rumor cycle to an end, Canon has announced the EOS 50D, a follow-up to the popular 40D, which will remain available at least through the end of the year. Though the timing seems a bit surprising–the 40D is only a year old, and midrange dLSR cycles tend to run closer to 18 months rather than 12–it was probably inevitable once the Rebel XSi, which is very similar to the 40D, shipped.

Built around the identical body as the 40D–the only differences are the name plate and mode-dial bezel–the 50D brings with it a bump to 15 megapixels. According to Canon, the new sensor has smaller pixels than that of the 40D’s 10-megapixel version, but the company claims superior noise and image quality; 1.5 stops better, in fact, thanks to an improved manufacturing process and larger, gapfree microlenses that effectively result in the same light-sensitive area, according to Canon.

In combination with an upgrade to a newer version of the company’s image processor, dubbed Digic 4, Canon also says that the higher resolution won’t impose a significant performance penalty, and that the 50D will be able to maintain burst speeds close to the 40Ds. And now that the camera’s CompactFlash supports UDMA, the burst buffer can process more shots–JPEGs, at least.

And though it has a 3-inch LCD like the 40D, Canon has switched to the same higher-resolution display found on the Nikon D300

Some key differences:

50D
40D

Sensor
15.1-megapixel CMOS
10.1-megapixel CMOS

Sensitivity range
ISO 100 to ISO 12,800
ISO 100 to ISO 3,200

Image processor
Digic 4
Digic III

Continuous shooting
6.3 fps
90 JPEG/16 raw
(60 JPEG with non-UDMA card)
6.5fps
75 JPEG/17 raw

Autofocus
9-pt AF
all cross-type to f5.6
high-precision diagonal cross-type in center to f2.8
9-pt AF
all cross-type to f5.6

Price (body only)
$1,399
$1,099

The Digic 4 enables some other new capabilities, including face detection in Live View mode (up to 35 faces), additional settings for the Auto Lighting Optimizer and high-ISO noise reduction (low, medium, and strong), and user-requested variable raw sizes of 7 and 3.8 megapixels. There are also some tweaks to the autofocus system, for example compensation for pulsed versus constant illumination, and support for in-camera lens databases that enable it to perform vignette correction and ensure undergraded illumination across the entire frame. Finally, Canon has improved the dust prevention, with a fluorine coating in front of the low-pass filter to deal with sticky dust.

Canon expects to ship the 50D in early October. The body will run $1,399, and a kit with the f3.5-5.6 28-135mm IS USM lens will cost $1,599.