At 5:29 PM -0700 4/1/2001, Gary Fisher wrote:
>They did it with the 10/10s and the 100/Elan. The
>biggest problem with barcodes was carrying around the
>barcode reader and the book of barcodes, looking up
>the one you wanted, scanning it .... you get the idea.
Wellll, the barcodes are also pretty useless. They simply let you
program your own idiot modes. You can set a few things like, say,
whether you want aperture priority or whether flash comes on or
whatever.
But you can't radically alter the behaviour of the camera. You can't
go in and reprogram it to support an intervalometer, or adjust the
RC-1 IR sensor timeout period or permit the redeye reduction lamp to
work with second-curtain sync or anything else actually useful.
What us camera geeks would really love, of course, would be a nice
direct interface to the camera's firmware. You'd plug in a wire,
alter the firmware (preferably through a nice simple flowchart GUI,
of course) and then flash the EEPROM. Naturally there'd be a Palm
interface so you could do this in the field as well.
This would be totally cool, but I really don't think the geek market
is even remotely big enough to support something like this. I
understand at least some parts of the firmware are flashable in at
least some EOS models via the hotshoe, but via proprietary Canon
testing gear only. For some reason, though, there doesn't seem to be
much hacker interest in figuring this all out.
- Neil K.
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