I am a fairly new to the CHDK, and am trying to use some A1300 cameras with the Accurate Intervalometer.
That's a fairly old script but might be a good one for your camera (see below).
I have used this script with the A1200 previously, and was able to get impressive battery life - about 600 photos at 1 photo per minute for 10 h. However, I am only able to get about 150-250 photos from the A1300s. I haven't been able to figure out why the battery life is so much worse with the A1300s; I've confirmed that the display turns off, and it is not refocusing for each photo.
Here's the links to the Canon web pages for each camera :
A1200 A1300To summarize, Canon rates the A1300 as about 10% to 20% better in terms of battery life.
I've tried several different batteries under different conditions; these trial runs were all conducted with new alkaline batteries.
From the Canon spec quoted above, your battery life will just about double if you go to NiMH batteries.
I know that the A1300 CHDK is still in beta; do you think the battery performance would be likely to improve with a stable CHDK release?
Beta designation does mean a lot other than that somebody forgot to remove the designation after awhile. The A1300 is about as good and stable as any other and it's as good as it gets.
Is there some other setting or script I should consider?
There is an updated version here :
https://github.com/alfredopironti/chdk-scripts/blob/master/lapse.lua that uses the latest power saving features.
However, your A1300 has an optical viewfinder, which means you can turn the display off with the DISP button (or have the script do it). In my testing, (
link ) this is the optimum method of getting power savings. The original version of this script uses that method so you might be better to stick with that.