RAW imaging with the Canon G7
I bought my Canon G7 a while ago, in order to be able to carry a compact yet powerful point & shoot camera instead of lugging my d350 kit – that’s a digital rebel – around all the time. It looked then like Canon had lost all interest in their G line, and the G7 might even be the last model for all I knew, so I got hold of one. Not long thereafter, they changed their minds and introduced the G9, which offers one essential feature the G7 doesn’t: pictures in RAW format. The G7 takes great pictures in JPEG, but it would have been nice to at least have that option available.
Anyway, I stumbled across this posting on DPreview only, which compares G7s RAW results to JPG, so it’s a bit of a WTF, I could have done RAW all along.
The solution is fairly simple, but takes a bit of trial and error: follow the instructions here. Basically, it takes you through the necessary steps to create a bootable SD card, which will “inject” CHDK into your camera’s system when you switch it on. It’s purely optional: simply slide the SD lock to choose between standard start up or with CHDK.
Although I followed the steps to the letter, there were a few variations: first, the camera didn’t tell me which exact firmware it uses, or at least 1.0.0.0 wasn’t on the list of the four various firmware versions offered for download. Then, I had a short moment of panic as nothing happened when I switched on the camera, as this was the symptom that had me twice take it to the repair shop.
Luckily this wasn’t so, the trick is to briefly remove the battery and insert it again. I suppose this flushes some memory or other. After all this, it fired up ok.
Go into playback mode, press print (thats left above the display) and menu, this will give you the CHDK menu. It is chock full of options, but for now I’m only interested in RAW.
I took a quick snapshot and had a look at postproduction. The camera takes a simultaneous RAW and JPG, which I don’t think you can change. The RAW files were roughly 10MB, so that’s pretty large. Worst though, Aperture wouldn’t accept the CRW files nor when they were converted to DNG (at 20MB each), which is a real bummer. Until I figure out something for the mac, I’ll have to work on the RAW files on the PC. The results seem OK:
Since I need to decide upon switching on the camera which format I’ll be shooting in, I suppose I’ll only be using CHDK when I am prepared. Postproduction seems a bummer, but at least it is working, and RAW definitely gives you that extra flexibility. Worthwhile looking a bit closer at black and white.
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Welcome to Irakli West's personal pages on the Web. I am Danish, live close to Munich in Germany, and run FWnetz, an online magazine and training resource for firefighters. In real life, I am Regional Manager Northern Europe for Paratech and currently training to become a specialist in Urban Search and Rescue as well as Heavy Rescue (it's fun, challenging and serves a good purpose)
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Successful G7 RAW "hack" http://tinyurl.com/6q7hgp w00t
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Best camera I have ever owned. It has so many features that it takes a lot of time to learn them, however, it also works great as a “point and shoot”. Well worth the money. Best features are multiple face recognition and image stabilization.