I'd just like to say that I am in awe of the people here who have done so much good work. THANK YOU!! I would not have a clue where to begin so offer my services as a tester only.
I just succeeded to use CHDK in my recently acquired SX1S and I have a couple of observations that may be of help in the de-bugging process of this port. I have read the entire thread, but there is so much information that what I am about to say may have been covered - if so I apologize.
This is my first encounter with CHDK with any Canon camera so I don't know if these are porting issues or something in the main CHDK code.
1) Histogram
When both the CHDK and Canon Histograms are enabled, they show the same data (as expected) UNTIL the shutter is half pressed. At this time, the CHDK histogram does something different;
a) It blinks briefly, probably due to a screen refresh.
b) The waveform shifts "down" the scale to the bottom 1/4 or so as if to indicate an underexposed image is about to be shot.
c) When the histogram is set to log (versus linear), there is also data displayed at the high end. The mid-range is low, the low end is high and the high end is medium. I guess the values at the high end are too low to show up in the linear histogram - but there is something there.
d) It becomes static until the shutter button is released whereupon it returns to normal live monitoring.
e) The static waveform produced is exactly the same every time, regardless of what exposure brightness was in the viewfinder, or even if the lens cap is left on. Its almost as if it is loading in some constant data instead of the image data.
f) This occurs exactly the same whether the screen is in 4:3 or 16:9 mode. Also it seems to be the same in any shooting mode.
g) If the histogram is set to only show at Shoot time, it briefly pops up with the correct data, but then immediately goes static with offset data again.
h) In addition, if AE lock is enabled by half-shutter press plus pressing the +/- exposure button, the histogram disappears off the screen until the AE lock is cancelled.
I tried adjusting every parameter in the histogram menu and although the display changes as you'd expect, this shutter half-press issue shows the same tendency in every case.
The original Canon histogram stays live during all operations.
If anyone researching this needs some screenshots, I'll do my best to add them later - just let me know.
2) User Menu
Attempting to edit the menu seems to be impossible if I follow the instructions in the most recent CHDK User Guide. I set the mode to EDIT then go into the User Menu but there is only one item (return to main menu) and no "blank" spots.
3) Enable OSD Symbols
Just a minor point but if these are turned on in the menu, the option reverts to off again after switching off and restarting the camera.
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For general information, I first loaded CHDK by the following method.
4GB card formatted completely to FAT16, copied all CHDK files plus bootdisk.bin and locked the card. Loaded it into the camera and switched on, the CHDK logo came up (hoot hoot!!).
Went into the Canon menus and found "Firmware Update...", selected that and it said "update firmware 2.0.0 --> 1.1.0.
Selected "yes" and the camera seemed to lock up.
Took out the batteries and restarted and everything was fine, CHDK is loading automatically every time.
Now I am not sure if using the bootdisk.bin method should require the "firmware update" to be applied at every start-up but I only ever had to do it once.
Then I tried experimenting with putting two partitions on the card (not easy because I use WIndows XP), but I succeeded with 2.00MB of FAT16 for bootdisk.bin and the 2nd partition of FAT32 for CHDK files and data.
After reformatting the card and running the camera without CHDK, then re-installing CHDK on the card, it was never necessary to go back into "firmware update" again.
(for anyone else who is interested, the card with two partitions needs to be downloaded to a Windows computer through the camera. A card reader cannot identify the two partitions)
