Tweaking Coolpix 4500 to produce RAW images (1 Viewer)

Hi,

Firstly apologies if this topic has been covered before. A few websites provide directions and links to firmware tweaks that will, according to them, allow you to produce RAW images from the Nikon Coolpix 4500.

Here are three examples of such sites, all using similar strategies.

Has anyone on this forum used these methods and software? I am just a bit nervous about downloading homemade software from a website with a .ru address.......maybe I am just being too cautious?

I would really appreciate your feedback on whether this works, whether there is a downside, and if it is worth what seems like a good deal of hassle.

Thanks

Mícheál

http://www.jim-easterbrook.me.uk/astro/ap/raw/

http://groups.msn.com/NikonCoolpix4500supportgroup/download.msnw

http://weblog.freshoutthebox.co.uk/2005/07/22/nikon-4500-coolpix-has-a-hidden-secret/

Interresting, I wonder if it works on a p5100... anyone dare to test

Sorry to hijack you thread but tried this on the p5100 but the program don't even find the camera. Probably because it is not mounted as an external drive, it just pops up as "p5100" in explorer.

Have been searching some to find ways around this but can't find any. Found quite a few 4500 users who have tweaked successfully though. Hopefully someone will hack the p5100 as well.

As I see it the 4500 can create TIFF files which are as good as RAW becuse they are uncompressed and won't lose the information stored like a JPEG will if you edit it over and over. Downside is it is extraordinarily slow to write to the card and takes up lots of space. Maybe not such a problem if you've got a large capacity 300x speed card but they cost nearly as much as the camera!

Regards.
Jaff