Frankencamera - The future

This is very cool; this is the future

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august3...era-090109.html

This is very cool; this is the future

 

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august3...era-090109.html

I'm probably in danger of confining myself to the dark ages, but...

The amount of light and colour that enters the camera through the lens is contrained by the rules of physics. No amount of programming is going to change that.

The way that light and colour is recorded at the first instance is constrained by the sensor design. Again, no amount of programming is going to change that.

The sensor passes on that information as raw data, again, no programming involved, atleast in terms of manipulation of data.

So it's not until you get to the stage of converting the raw image to the end file type that open source programming could provide any input. I would rather leave that stage of things to a big screen and a big processor in a quiet room (i.e. I would probably turn that sort of functionality off on a camera, even if it was available)

Just me narrow minded view point, of course

Yes; but all these 'components' will be modular. So in concept both hardware and software can be advanced in tandem. One only has to look at Smartphone technology to see how software is really where the future of photography lies

There is a lot of room for improvement in camera SYSTEM firmware.

This is the real time aspect of camera operations. And this is where canon, nikon, and olympus really fail to deliver; their implementation of contrast based auto focus, is just not on par with panasonic or sony.

There is a lot of room for improvement in camera SYSTEM firmware.

 

This is the real time aspect of camera operations. And this is where canon, nikon, and olympus really fail to deliver; their implementation of contrast based auto focus, is just not on par with panasonic or sony.

I think the AF problem can be solved in hardware. Consider the small Sony NEX 5 camera with a relatively large APS-C sensor. Phase detection auto focusing would only require a few sites to be effective.

Bob

I've been to presentations about Frankencamera.

Think app store for cameras. The point is that you can use software to access cameras at the component level, which would unlock creativity for artists. The camera stack in a mobile phone can be seen as the starting point for this sort of thinking, but only high-level access is currently available.