Apple’s iPhone gets “jail-broken” (the best Marketing term for “hacked” that I’ve ever heard) quite frequently — in most cases because people don’t like the service provider or they would like to use it in countries where the iPhone is not officially available. But the iPhone is by far not the only consumer device that has been hacked. From routers to e-readers to MP3 players, hacks have become more common these days (see Maximum PC for more details).
But what about cameras? Have they ever been hacked? In short: Yes!
Here are the 3 most prominent camera hacks:
Canon Digital Rebel “Russian Hack”
The first widely publicized camera hack was the “Russian Hack” for the Canon Digital Rebel. When Canon initially released the Digital Rebel, they essentially took a Canon 10D, which cost around $1500 at that time, stuff it into a new silver box, turn off a bunch of features (most noteably, Mirror Lock-Up) in the firmware of the new camera and release it for less than $1000. No wonder that a programmer (who was located in Russia, thus the moniker “Russian Hack”) hacked the firmware and turned back on all the settings that Canon had disabled. This voided the warranty of the camera, but you could restore it to the original firmware in case of a problem.
I had one of these Digital Rebels with the Russian Hack myself and never had a problem with it. In fact the camera is still being used by my niece and never showed a problem with its firmware in 9 years of operation.
CHDK – Canon PowerShot firmware add-on
Noting that a lot of Canon’s PowerShot point & shoot cameras share the same hardware and processing capabilities, but with various features turned on, off or tweaked in firmware, a group of engineers joined together to create the CHDK firmware add-on rather than hacked firmware to provide more control and access to the underlying hardware and firmware features. RAW support, live histograms, full manual support, shutter speeds up to 1/64000 and bracketing are supported – all features that more advanced shooters want in their cameras. For a complete list, see the CHDK Wiki. Most noteably, CHDK is not a firmware replacement, but an add-on which is loaded from your memory card (manually or automatically) when you turn on the camera. Tt does not alter the firmware and thus does not void the warranty.
If I were in the market for a point&shoot today, I would get one of the 46 supported Canon Powershots and then use CHDK.
Canon 5D Mk2 – Magic Lantern Video
Magic Lantern (see Wikia) is an open development platform to focus solely on improving one aspect of the great Canon 5D Mark2: Video. Its features include on-screen audio meters, manual gain control, zebra stripes, and crop marks for different aspect ratios. Similar to CHDK, it is a firmware add-on, so you do not replace the original firmware.
What is interesting is that all three hacks are for Canon cameras. If there is a hack for Nikon or other manufacturers, it has not been widely publicized.
Would you use a hacked camera?
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