As much as I love my Canon PowerShot G11, it’s just too big. It technically fits in my pocket but it’s uncomfortable to walk around with it in my pocket. So after seeing my co-worker Daniel Bachhuber’s Canon PowerShot S100 a few weeks back, I just had to have one for myself. Besides shooting just about as good of quality images (if not better) than my G11, it also shoots full 1080p video (compared to 640×480!!) and has built-in GPS tagging of photos. Awesome!
I’ve had CHDK on my Canon PowerShot G11 for about a month or two now. CHDK is a custom firmware that sits on top of the default Canon firmware (it does not replace it!) and allows you to do a ton of things that your Canon camera normally can’t do. For example, my G11 can only take exposures of up to 15 seconds. With this firmware, I can take incredibly long exposures if I want to (we’re talking up to hours or days).
Even more awesome though is that you can use CHDK to run scripts. I currently have two really awesome scripts on my camera. One is for time lapse — it will take a photo every X seconds/minutes for however long I want. Great for sunsets and more. The other is a motion detection script. It will sit and watch the scene and take a photo or video any time the scene changes (you can control sensitivity). It’s even good enough to catch lightning!
If you have a Canon camera, I highly recommend you taking a look at CHDK.