“How to Hack an Expensive Camera and Not Get Killed by Your Wife”

Reminds me of an episode of The Graham Norton Show where French actress Marion Cotillard was on the show with Irish brothers who won silver at the double sculls in the Rio Olympics, Michael Fassbender and James McAoy. Now I know how Marion felt.
 
I was a major in industrial management 50 years ago. Should I understand this?

My M8 has 2.xxx software and Leica says it is the latest. It will run that way until it dies.
 
I didn't understand a word of that ha ha. I guess the big question and maybe someone could explain is why would you want to to do that?
 
In another life I was asked to write a program. Not knowing how to program I taught myself how to use Excel and it's programing capabilities. Most fun I've ever had and got paid for doing it too. When I hit a problem with a 'If-Then' statement that was four layers deep, I asked the local IT guy for some help. He looked at what I'd done and said he had guys working for him with 3 years experience that still couldn't do that. Did I want a job?
This guy is WAY over the top though.
 
AlwaysOnAuto said:
In another life I was asked to write a program. Not knowing how to program I taught myself how to use Excel and it's programing capabilities. Most fun I've ever had and got paid for doing it too. When I hit a problem with a 'If-Then' statement that was four layers deep, I asked the local IT guy for some help. He looked at what I'd done and said he had guys working for him with 3 years experience that still couldn't do that. Did I want a job?
This guy is WAY over the top though.
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My brother is an engineer turned programmer. When I whinge about the appalling software I have to use for work sometimes he assures me that most IT people should not be allowed to touch a computer. The impressive ones I’ve met all started as engineers.
 
ninjin said:
An amazing write-up about diving into the M240 firmware [1] that popped up on my computer science channels, perhaps it will give you some enjoyment too?

[1]: https://alexhude.github.io/2019/01/24/hacking-leica-m240.html

One can only dream that we would see something along the lines of CHDK [2] or Magic Lantern [3] for our Leicas.

[2]: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
[3]: https://magiclantern.fm/
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Far as I'm concerned, this stuff is a nearly complete waste of time photographically albeit a fun hobby for a camera enthusiast.

The guy's article is just a bunch of software engineering jargon referencing the techniques and tools used for reverse-engineering the binary code of firmware updates. Nothing particularly difficult to follow or understand if you've spent your lifetime career pounding around the world of software development tools and debuggers, analytics, etc like I have.

None of this stuff is rocket science. Cameras—mechanical, electronic, film, or digital—are just little precise machines that someone designed and built. They all bend to the appropriate tools of analysis and decomposition by a knowledgeable technician. The myth and mystery of this stuff is as much just simple science as it is magic and craft woven together.

I was not formally trained in chemistry past second year high school science classes. The little book "Making Kodak Film" by Robert L. Shanebrook has more amazing and mysterious stuff in it than a description of reverse-engineering firmware does, for me. Never mind "A Triumph of Genius" by Fierstein (about Dr. Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Polaroid-Kodak patent war). 😀

G
 
Ko.Fe. said:
I get what he is high skilled in reversed engineering, hacking and coding. This is very good skills for now and for the future.
But what is beneficial in this particular exercise for me as photographer? Another quirky Magic Latern for IT geeks rather than everyday photographers like me?
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Little or nothing. Look at it as his posting an addendum to his CV.
 
Godfrey said:
Far as I'm concerned, this stuff is a nearly complete waste of time photographically albeit a fun hobby for a camera enthusiast.

The guy's article is just a bunch of software engineering jargon referencing the techniques and tools used for reverse-engineering the binary code of firmware updates. Nothing particularly difficult to follow or understand if you've spent your lifetime career pounding around the world of software development tools and debuggers, analytics, etc like I have.

None of this stuff is rocket science. Cameras—mechanical, electronic, film, or digital—are just little precise machines that someone designed and built. They all bend to the appropriate tools of analysis and decomposition by a knowledgeable technician. The myth and mystery of this stuff is as much just simple science as it is magic and craft woven together.

I was not formally trained in chemistry past second year high school science classes. The little book "Making Kodak Film" by Robert L. Shanebrook has more amazing and mysterious stuff in it than a description of reverse-engineering firmware does, for me. Never mind "A Triumph of Genius" by Fierstein (about Dr. Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Polaroid-Kodak patent war). 😀

G
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Lol ... you've just sucked the magic right out of it Godfrey. I was really impressed there for a while! 😛
 
semi-ambivalent said:
Little or nothing. Look at it as his posting an addendum to his CV.
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I have a friend who on hearing of this wants to contact him to hack his electric bike’s software.

The universal triumph of Alex Hude’s piece is his clear writing and sense of humour.

And he’s put Novosibirsk on the map for me. Remarkable place.
 
Fascinating article. I understood more than I thought I would, but two things on the debug menu were of interest:

- Adaptive Dynamic Range
- Focus Confirmation

Are these just new names for contrast settings and focus peaking or something else entirely?!

D
 
Keith said:
Lol ... you've just sucked the magic right out of it Godfrey. I was really impressed there for a while! 😛
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:angel: Sorry, I call 'em as I see 'em.

I've spent most of the past thirty years de-mystifying stuff like this in the various positions that made up my career. People talking about how 'magical' it is are just speaking from a place of unfamiliarity, that's all.

For example, my little car is a magic space ship to me. It's very sweet. But when I take my rose color glasses off, having worked in the auto/motorcycle mechanics world for a good while and having played their for most of my life, it's just another car made of all the bits and pieces that make up cars. Any machine can be analytically deconstructed to the designs and implementation of its being.

What makes a machine special is when all those designs and implementations are in harmony together. You don't need magic for a thing to be greater than the sum of its parts ... you need insight and well-thought-out design, clean implementation. And getting those things is rare and should be celebrated.

Reverse engineering firmware? Just hacking around. A lot of tedious work, to me. There has to be a huge benefit for it to be fascinating... 🙂

G
 
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