A few weeks ago, I was looking for enhancements for my Canon Powershot a620 camera. While digging around, I found a spectacular hack which will make the camera shoot in Raw Format, instead of Jpg. However, after hacking around with it, I found that the directions are a little flawed, due to the writer of the page being russian. So, here’s the new directions:

1) Download this file, and extract it anywhere.

2) Take camera, and format your sdcard completely

3) Take out your sdcard, and put it into your computer’s card reader. If you don’t have one, you might have some good luck using This uploader, though I never tried the ladder. Uploading via usb connection to the camera will not work, because the sd-reader in the camera rejects it.

4) Navigate to the card via ‘my computer’, and put the PS_A620.FIR file into the root of your sdcard, after that’s done, turn the camera on in ‘playback’, or ‘view’ mode.

5) Hit your ‘menu button’, and navigate to the tools section (middle tab), and go down to “File No. Reset”, toggle this from off to on, or just hit the “func set” button to ensure things are cool

6) go back up to the main menu (first tab), and scroll down to the bottom. There should be a “firm update” option. Select it using the func/set button, and click okay to apply it.

7) After that, the camera will reboot. Pay attention to your printer button. It should blink blue once. This is the camera telling you that the raw shooting software was loaded. Flip the camera into shooting mode, and your lens should expand out. Take three or more demo shots, and the first one may or may not shoot in raw format. The two+ after that should be in raw format, you can tell if they are shooting in raw format by looking at the printer button. It will blink blue if you are shooting in raw format.

With each photo you take, one raw format shot will be created, and one jpg format shot will be created. The raw format photos will be up around 8MB, while the jpg format photos will be around 1.5MB. For managing your raw photos, i have had a good time using Adobe Bridge. You won’t be able to use the regular windows picture and fax viewer for these files.

With each set of photos you take between power cycles, you will need to re-load the firmware hack, this can be done by following these directions:

1) Turn camera on in view mode
2) Verify your file no. reset thing, hit the func set button to verify it
3) Navigate to play menu, go to “firm update”, say OK to everything, the camera will reboot, everything after that will be shooting in raw/jpg format.

The files will be wrote to the “100CANON” directory. If you get another directory, for instance: “102CANON”, you may be able to ignore it. However, I think the photos will get wrote to the 100canon directory whenever the hack is loaded. In your 100CANON directory, raw format photos will be named IMG_1001.jpg, while jpg should be somethin’ like IMG_0001.jpg.

If you have any questions related to the hack, I might be able to help if you comment. I got some good feedback from this guy who’s email is vitalyvb [@@@ttttt] ukr.net .