B. Mann Consulting

First, what the heck is CHDK??! Basically, it's a "firmware enhancement" for a whole list of Canon PowerShot cameras (supported camera model list here). You follow a process where you copy some files onto your memory card, and instead of your camera booting the "regular" operating system, it boots from the memory card instead.

OK, so what does all THAT mean? Basically, today's digital cameras have operating systems -- software -- that runs many of their features. In fact, software is some times one of the main difference between "lower end" cameras and the higher end Digital SLRs. By loading this software onto your camera, you get access to a whole host of other features. The CHDK in Brief page has a list of those additional features -- the three of most interest to be so far are 1) enabling RAW mode, 2) exposure times as long as 65 seconds and 3) exposure times as little as 1/10,000 of a second. There are all sorts of other scripts that can actual be loaded and run on the camera as well. I'm interested in checking out the intervalometer aka timelapse scripts.

So, I spent perhaps 3 hours on Friday, cursing and swearing after the first 30 minutes, swapping my SD card between my computer and my camera, trying to get this stuff working. Looks like most people that are messing with this are on Windows or Linux, and getting this working on the Mac presents some special challenges.

Here are the steps (and yak shaving) that I had to do to get CHDK running on my Canon S5 IS. This assumes that you won't run screaming from using the Terminal, and are at least going to be OK cut and pasting commands in.