Technically Speaking

I came across this article this morning and it confirmed a suspicion I had months ago. I guessed that Canon might have used the exact circuitry from its 10D model in the production of the Rebel. This strategy could have been plotted as a way to cut the cost of production and to insure that the consumer didn’t get all the features of the more expensive model, the firmware could have been altered to hide some specialty features. If the innards of the Rebel are not identical to the 10D then they are very nearly exact.

It turns out that someone has figured a way to unlock a few of the hidden features and it is done through the firmware. So far, I have seen a couple features that I would like to have on my camera so I might consider hacking the firmware on my camera. I’m a little apprehensive because the Rebel is a $1000 piece of equipment. I would hate for something wrong to happen. They claim that the hack can be reversed so that is a bit of solace.

Its been widely known that the Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel and the Canon EOS 10D DSLR’s are similar beasts. In fact, if you look at their Side-by-side comparisons you can see that most of the features that vary are catagorized as “Customizable”.

The 10D has a menu item called “Custom Functions” which allows these settings to be adjusted. Well, a fellow in Russia found that in the latest firmware, by switching a single byte in the firmware image, he was able to enable most of these 10D “Custom Functions” in the Digital Rebel. Now, some features, such as more frames in rapid shooting, are hardware-limitations but some features lacking such as Flash Exposure Compensation and embedded JPEG quality are found to be working in the 300D.

This is not the 10D firmware, it is the 300D firmware with some of the dormant 10D features enabled. The developers probably shared the codebase between the two models. The 10D firmware will not work on your 300D.

Now, be aware that this Modified firmware will violate your warranty!

The following data is from a long thread on DP Review’s forums:

I have attempted to confirm what works, and if it does not specify ‘[WORKS]’ then I have not confirmed it yet.

Quote Source

If you click the details link below you can check out which features have been confirmed to work. Good luck if you decide to try this one out. I’ll update this entry if I decide to do it myself. (I’m pretty sure that I will do the hack!)

CF1: SET button func. when shooting. [WORKS]
0: Default (no function)
1: Change quality
2: Change parameters
3: Menu display
4: Image replay

CF2: Shutter release w/o CF card [WORKS]
0: Possible without CF card
1: Not possible

CF3: Flash Sync speed in Av mode [WORKS]
0: Auto
1: 1/200sec (fixed)

CF4: Shutter button / AE lock button

0: AF/AE Lock
1: AE Lock/AF
2: AF/AF lock, no AE lock
3 AE/AF, no lock

CF5: AF-Assist Beam / Flash firing [NO]

0: Emits/Fires
1: Does not emit/Fires
2: Only ext. flash emits/Fires
3: Emits/does not fire

CF6: Exposure level increments: [WORKS]
0: 1/2-stop
1: 1/3 stop

CF8: RAW+JPEG rec. [WORKS]
0:RAW+Small Normal
1:RAW+Small Fine
2:RAW+Medium Normal
3: RAW+Medium Fine
4:RAW+Large Normal
5:RAW+Large Fine

CF9: Bracket. sequence/auto cancel
0: 0,-,+/enable (300D default)
1: 0,-,+/disable
2: -,0,+/enable
3: -,0,+/disable

CF10: Superimposed display
0: on
1: off

CF11: Menu button display position
0: previous(top if powered off)
1: previous
2: top

CF12: mirror lockup [WORKS]
0: disable (300D default)
1: enable

CF14: Auto reduction of fill flash - not tested yet
0: enable (300D default)
1: disable

CF15: Shutter curtain sync [NO]
0: 1st curtain sync
1: 2nd curtain sync

CF16: Safety shift in av or tv
0: disable
1: enable

CF17: Lens af stop button function
0: af stop
1: af start
2: ae lock while metering
3: af point: m->auto/auto-ctr.
4: one shot -> <- ai servo
5: IS start

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.