Sky at Night Magazine

[mba007]

Never having seen a Canon 20Da in the flesh, and only ever knowingly seen a Canon 20D behind those nice glass doors at my local photographic shop a thought crossed my mind [8|]. If one wanted to gain the benefits of 5x/10x zoom on the LCD to drastically aid focussing, which is a feature of the 20Da, but one only has a 20D ... would it be possible to use the Canon 20Da firmware on a 20D? I guess, legally, I should point out not to try this at home! as I may well be spouting nonsense and your precious cameras may well never work again(!), but I was wondering if anyone else has heard whether this is possible?

According to a couple of magazine comparisons, the 20Da and 20D have identical hardware, apart from the removal of the IR filter, which leads me to suspect that firmware-related benefits, such as the LCD zoom capability could be compatible.

Again, don't try this at home!

Cheers,

Martin

[Chanctonbury]

There is a well known and well documented 'hack' for the Canon EOS 300D which adds several Canon 10D features including the very desirable 'mirror lock'. I suspect that Canon are not too happy about this well publicised hack and have probably taken steps to stop such mods. being viable on their newer cameras.

Getting firmware upgrades wrong can result in a high-tech door stop! That said, for me, the most useful feature of the 20Da is the lack of the rather wide IR filter and this would, of course, be unaffected by a firmware change.

As you rightly say, don't try this at home kids ....

[mba007]

Good point, Steve. Getting something for nothing in this day-and-age is probably wishful thinking[:D]. Having worked for a Japanese telecoms company for 6 years in research and development we always had a gung-ho attitude to the laboratory kit ... hardware and firmware ... partly because we liked to play, but mostly because if it went wrong we had the developers on hand to fix it ... obviously at no personal cost.

I guess that if Canon do not give guidance on this issue then we must assume that it is not possible.

Just to reiterate....don't try this!!!

Martin