Cameras for the Hackerspace Scanner

[pablitoclavito]

Neither the a4000IS nor A3400IS has chdk support yet. And I don't see much movement in the A4000IS porting thread
I have the A4000IS and the canon A3200IS. A3200 is very good in terms of output quality and has chdk support

[evamvid]

what about the powershot A2300? It's 16 MP, has cdhk support, and is almost as cheap as an 8 or 10 MP camera...

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-S ... al+camera
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Powershot-A ... B004HW73QG
The second link is the A2200 (only 14 MP), which is actually more expensive at the time of writing...

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/A2300

PS I dont know if someone already mentioned it; I skipped parts of the thread

[pablitoclavito]

UPDATE: canon A4000IS has now chdk support
I have spotted this model for 80 pounds in amazon uk

[kallampero]

Noisebridge is also curious about a current standard, if one exists. It looks like it will be one type of Powershot or another, since we don't really have the budget to go big with DSLRs. Something in the A2x00 line?

As a side note, this doc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... Uemc#gid=0

looks like it could do with some updating.

edit: Just noticed that the A2200 has no image stabilization where the A2400IS does. Even though they'll be mounted, is the amount of motion created while scanning enough to make IS an advantage?

[daniel_reetz]

A2200IS is one standard, A810 is another; I agree that the Google Doc could use some updating. Image stabilization is useful in non-sturdy scanners, it's less important in scanners with sturdy frames on sturdy tables. You don't need stabilization if your lights are bright enough.

Since you are doing this as a hackerspace project, email me if you want to try out a new light and document a little something about it. I really want to take a different path with the LEDs, but life is kicking the crap out of me right now and I don't have a lot of time for testing.

[rkomar]

Doing a quick search for "CCD CMOS", I haven't seen any discussions here about the two sensor types. CMOS is supposedly much faster than CCD. In the past, CCD produced better image quality and noise levels, but that gap seems to have closed in recent times. I wonder if the people complaining about slow write times all have CCD cameras. I have a couple of Canon A4000 cameras that have CCD sensors, and they're a bit slow themselves, which is why I looked into this in the first place.

[kallampero]

rkomar:

that's good to know, especially considering I was just offered a free SD1300IS which I was considering for use in Noisebridge's new scanner. Alas, it is CCD.

[rkomar]

I know that CMOS is faster, but I don't know if CCD is slow enough to affect single-shot times. It seems you need a CMOS camera to shoot HD video whereas my CCD camera only shoots 640x480, and I've seen complaints about how slow CCD cameras are in continuous mode, but I don't know if it's so slow that it has trouble keeping up with a fast DIY scanner. I was hoping some with experience would chime in. Anyway, if you have a choice of CCD or CMOS for about the same price, it seems that CMOS is the better choice if you want to go fast.

[VipeRsan]

What is better to buy? Used 14.1MP IXUS 130 or new 16MP A series (A2300, A2400, A3400)?

[daniel_reetz]

If any of those models support CHDK, then that's the one to buy.