Interesting. Punching balloon into the search up there just shows your post, but going through a site: search on Google yields more results. However, they all seem to be based on "I have this camera, what should I set it to?", rather than "what camera is best?".
The forum search is weird sometimes. Forum member fbonomi had some very successful balloon flights:
http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=3766.msg36402#msg36402http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=2877.15 (content of some posts seems to have gone missing in the forum move
, There's some info on his site
http://francescobonomi.it/stratosphere-photography )
Most of the balloon projects I can recall used quite low end cameras.
Some zoom is good, but I don't need it to be huge.
If you don't need a whole lot of zoom, you might be better off with the G series rather than SXnn for a fairly high end camera. The next step down would be the SXnnn or the Snn. All else being equal, I'd stay away form the ixus/elf subcompacts unless you need the small size.
For sensitivity and image quality, review sites like
http://www.dpreview.com/ should give you a good idea what to expect. CHDK won't change any of that. If you go for a cheap camera or subcompact, be aware that many of them don't have an adjustable aperture. If the Canon specs include an Av mode, then it should have a real aperture.
Image stabilization would be really nice.
Pretty much every semi-recent Canon except the bottom of the line (cheapest A series) has image stabilization. It's designed to compensate for hand shake in long hand held exposures, so I'm not sure how well it will perform in other vibration environments.
as well as supporting as many CHDK features as possible
CHDK mostly supports the same features across all the cameras. You should be able to do what you describe with any completed port. Individual ports do have their quirks, but unfortunately they aren't documented in any central location (if at all
). Your best bet is to check the wiki page and porting thread for the models you are interested in. Or come up with a short list and ask if people know of any outstanding issues on them. You can also poke through the cameras platform_camera.h to see what is enabled or disabled, but be warned enabled doesn't guarantee it works!
