The issue is that the infinity focus point is a bit different with the IR conversion.
While that may be technically correct, the DOF on these little cameras with their little lenses and sensor tends to make everything beyond 5 meters the same when you set for "infinity". I don't think that should change much when using IR.
I am trying to use CHDK to manually focus where I want it, but it doesn't seem to have any effect beyond the infinity setting.
If I use manual focus and set infinity, the SD gets set to around 1600.
Where are you getting the 1600 number from? If it's a CHDK OSD value then that is only 1.6 meters!
The issue is that when I go higher than this it doesn't seem to have any effect and the pics never get sharper. I know the camera can focus beyond there because it will do it in autofocus mode. Is there some software limit I need to remove? Any other ideas?
Unfortunately, the whole CHDK SD override process is hit & miss at best. For example, my S100 with accept SD override commands successfully but several other forum members cannot get the same results with their S100's.
I'd like to tell you there is a simple fix for this but so far all we have come up with is "some cameras work, some cameras" don't,
There is a long forum thread here :
Setting focus from scripts or menus detailing a huge amount of work that went into this last year. We had some success - especially with using SD overrides from scripts. But there are still a lot of things we just don't understand or have not figured out the correct way to port.
I know the camera can focus beyond there because it will do it in autofocus mode.
It's my personal opinion that the whole SD override thing on the cheaper Powershots (the ones without built-in Canon MF capability) is something Canon left in the code but never tuned / calibrated. The thread I posted above talks about comparing the focus mechanical position to the reported focus point and trying to work with that. The results are interesing but inconclusive.