Let me clarify a little more. I am well aware of how HDR works. Since I've been shooting for at least 8 years now. Mostly with my compact Olympus c5050Zoom and now for the last year and a half with the D700. Most of the time I don't shoot hdr, but sometimes it's really useful. It bothers me that Nikon, Canon and other Camera makers make little effort to satisfy the needs of people that like HDR and other HDR like processes like blending multiple exposures.
One must admit that the D700 is well ahead of most cameras in bracketing but it still has flaws, and like most of the cameras it's mostly just a matter of firmware programing. It's the little things like: ev steps limited to 1ev, 9exposure bracket limit, can't lock up the mirror while bracketing (not even in live view LOL), needing to switch two setting banks to load up setting that are best for shooting HDR, needing to hold the relese button to bracket a burst of shots adding to the shake...
shooting connected to a windows device?... camera control pro won't allow for custom bracketing... same situation as with the on camera operation, only benefit is that I don't touch the camera. can't even shoot multiple frames in Manual mode without the computer downloading every shot first. WTF?... This slows down the bracketing operation alot... you get custom exposures but at the expense of a large delay when the computer downloads.
I have a few options to streamline the HDR shooting.
1. buy a Promote
2. buy a small device capable of running windows and install nikon SDK and my own program to control the camera... best option for D700 possible
3. buy a separate canon compact and use CHDK to program it to do whatever I want
1.[flaws: probably can't set the settings of the camera to optimize for shooting HDR]
2.[flaws: maybe a bulky device, laptop is no option. I'd like to get one of those Viliv s5's. Also it might actualy be more expensive than getting a separate CHDK-able canon compact. Need some way to interface the separate shuter release cable with the windows device... like the Promote enables faster bracketing (basicly emulates a finger on the camera
]
3.[flaws: it might be slower, it's not D700
]
In terms of compactness, if i get a really small windows device chances are that the canon camera will be still smaller and cheaper to get.
Are you guys getting my drift now? I asked what camera is best for CHDK because I thought that not all cameras support CHDK bracketing, focus stacking and other features that I might want.
Any sugestions for a fast bracketing small camera?
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About the electronic shutter... It's just a idea I got from reading some stuff on wikipedia about various senzor types. I guess that it might be possible that camera makers are now using senzors similar to a so called Frame transfer CCD since we can record HD video. (see wikipedia for detail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device ) I doubt that the senzor itself groups the pixels (if a ccd is used. CMOS might be a diferent storry) Or does it? I'm interested to here from people that know a bit about how this stuff really works.
EDIT: now that I look at the picture more closely i see there's no chance they are using it in regular cameras
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Lebeau, im not quite clear on what you are aiming at. I might get it in a single shot with my D700 if I really pushed it but most likely with a lot more noise in the deep shadow areas.
Thanks for the replies so far guys, any more suggestions?
Post how you use CHDK for HDR and what you like / dislike about the CHDK method if you want.