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The CHDK firmware add-on is now available for the Canon SX10 IS. This firmware is a non-destructive (runs off the SD card, doesn't overwrite your camera's own firmware) addition that enables many advanced and cool features that aren't available in the camera from the factory. I've been using it for the enhanced on-screen display and the ability to save the raw image data to the card.

Enhanced OSD

The enhancements to the on-screen display include many things which are detailed on the CHDK Wiki and I won't bother repeating here. However, I've added battery and temperature to my display. This lets me see just how much battery life I have left, rather than only getting a warning when the batteries are low, and it also lets me see how warm the optics, sensor, and batteries are. This gives me an idea of the image quality to expect, since the optics may distort at high or low temperatures, and if the sensor gets too warm, it will get noisy and the camera will take longer to save images.

RAW shooting

The CHDK firmware allows you to save your image in RAW or DNG format, in addition to the JPG that is normally output by the camera. I have not yet found a program that will read the RAW images from the SX10, but the DNGs can be easily read by the UFRaw GIMP plugin. The DNG images are not compressed, and the colour depth is greater, which means that, for example, I can use a single DNG to create a series of EV-adjusted images and tone map them onto a single HDR image. This eliminates the need to take three seperate bracketed exposures, line them up, etc etc.

I took a walk through the woods today and photographed a bunch of interesting stuff. You can see the results of processing DNGs in my nature album