I recently updated the firmware on my little Canon Ixus-70 with the CHDK Firmware. This 3rd party firmware provides the camera you install it on with a wide range of new and exciting features. Allowing you to force the shutter speed and ISO to ranges previously unsupported by the native Canon Firmware. CHDK also allows you to run your own scripts on your camera to perform weird and wonderful tasks, some (such as the intervalometer used in the test video above) are truly useful additions to an already handy and nifty little camera. Others… are less so, but interesting nonetheless.

The Best part about CHDK (besides the ability to now play some games on your camera, of course)? The new firmware lives on the SD card, meaning no risk of messing up your camera. If things start to go a bit wrong (user scripts allow you to run into some really neat new ways of crashing the camera and overflowing the memory!), simply turn the camera off and on again. You can set the CHDK firmware to either load auto-magically on boot-up (provided that the card is ‘locked’), or manually load it when you wish to use it. Loading the new firmware still allows you to use your camera as you normally would, it just adds new sets of menus full of goodness for you to explore and play with (very literally if you load up some of the games provided!).

If you have a Canon point and shoot camera and a card reader (which is required to install the firmware onto the card), I urge you to go and install this! Your camera will thank you.