Okay, this r00Lz!! I found a firmware hack called CHDK for my Canon (actually all with the DigicII chip) that allows shooting in RAW mode. Yes, RAW, just like it should have been able to do when Canon rolled it out, but couldn’t because it was a $500 model, not a $700 model. Also other cool hacks like using the zoom button for manual focus (if the MF button is held down) instead of the arrow button (which is wonderful because I’m rather a bit clumsy with the arrow button) and exposure bracketing, which it doesn’t do out of the box, either (only focus bracketing, or if it could do exposure, I could never figure out how the fuck it worked or find it in the manual). I don’t like HDR photos that much, but I thought it might be fun to try if I should happen upon the right scene (and happen to have a tripod with me….riiiight). Anyway, my camera is now out of warranty, so it wouldn’t matter much, but the beauty of this hack is that it it’s only as “permanent” as you want it to be; it’s resident in the camera’s memory and if you want, it can be activated manually every time you turn on the camera, or you can set a card as bootable so the script runs when you turn it on. Use a different card, and you’re back to Canon’s official firmware. I still haven’t figured out how to toggle RAW mode on and off, but that’s because I just installed it two hours ago and I’ve since been playing with it, plus trying to figure out how to get something to read the files, since it’s not a “known” RAW format (though it shows as “Canon RAW”).

I figured I’d be stuck with only Windows Picasa, which would allow very limited editing, and then could be exported to JPG. That would defeat my reason for wanting RAW in the first place because if I wanted to be able to do only limited editing, I wouldn’t have coughed up for P-shop. I did, and it’s the only reason I will still boot into that awful excuse for an OS anymore, so no, Picasa export to JPG just ain’t gonna cut it.

I *ahem* “located” the Adobe Camera RAW plugin, figuring that if any RAW format existed, this could probably read it, but it did not recognise the file type. Well, fuck it–GIMP’s probably got something, and I’d rather use that anyway because it runs on Linux and I wouldn’t have to reboot. I found the uRAW plugin for GIMP, and the standalone uRAW app, but it did not recognise the RAW files even though the S3IS hack was supposed to be supported. Fuck.

Off I go to the trusty Ubuntu forums to see whether anything else might work. There, I discover an application called Raw Therapee (I am not making that name up), which is free for anyone to download and use forever, though the author does cheerfully accept donations of $5, $10 or $25. I checked to see whether the hacked S3IS was supported, and it was, so I downloaded the tarball and extracted it. There’s no “installation”; it just runs from wherever it is, so I copied it into my /home and fired it up. I loaded up a directory of RAW files, expecting another error message about unsupported format, but what I got was…a lovely RAW image of the junk on top of my fishie cupboard! I have roughly half an idea of how the program works, but there are lots of adjustment options available, and if I didn’t have so much to do today, I’d spend the next three hours just playing with it. Alas, the fish need water changes and there’s much else to be done, so no time now. Still, it’s pretty fucking awesome; almost like getting a brand new camera for nothing. Unless Raw Therapee turns out to be a huge disappointment, I’ll certainly make a donation of either $10 or $25, depending upon how useful it is to me, but that’s a small price to pay for getting RAW access, and especially without having to permanently alter the camera’s firmware. Now, if only it had a hotshoe (the S5IS does), I’d be perfectly content, but I’ll survive. Besides, I never did get around to making one of those flash diffusers from styrofoam bowls so it doesn’t burn out stuff when you’re shooting macro.

Time to get to work…well, maybe we’ll just play with one more RAW image…. 😉