> Would this be totally out of the question? I assume you are not planning on building a custom lens? Maybe use one of the existing mounts and use lenses from Canon or Nikon.
> 1. It should support 24 bit color JPEG2000 (both lossy and lossless) > compression. JPEG is basically obsolete and I can't help but wonder why > it is still the standard format for digital cameras since the artifacts > seriously degrade images -- actually worse than lower resolution would be. Most people just take snapshots and don't care about quality. > 2. The so called RAW format should be Adobe DNG and/or "OpenRAW" (which > isn't actually a format). Is Adobe DNG an open standard? Seems like it would be easy to give the user lots of choices of formats, including "write your own". > 4. Then there is the problem of remote control of the camera; it appears > that there are no standards here. A computer connected by Ethernet, > IEEE-1394, or USB (a camera would probably have only one of these) > should be able to display the live preview image, obtain exposure and > focus information, and control all aspects of the camera that can be > controlled on the camera. And infrared remote, which can be handy for some applications. > I also have a lot of issues with digital still cameras: > > 1. They seem to all be designed to emulate film still cameras. For some > reason, digital video cameras don't have these problems so I presume > that they are design issues. Is there some reason that you can't set > both the aperture and the shutter speed (within limits) and still have > automatic exposure control? You can manually set aperture XOR shutter speed and still have automatic exposure control. The camera adjusts which ever one you don't set. And some cameras have fully automatic (camera sets both) modes which favor a high shutter speed, or favor a small aperture, etc. With open source the user could write whatever algorithm they want. > 2. It is presumed that to have interchangeable lenses that it must be a > high end SLR. OTOH, the high end SLRs all seem to come with large (but > questionable quality) zoom lenses. In either case, the possible > advantages of a compact camera and lenses are lost. Nobody (except > Sigma) makes a fast normal lens. In film cameras there used to be (maybe still are?) a whole range of 35mm SLRs, low end, medium, high end. You can't buy a digital SLR body without a lens? I find it hard to believe that Canon and Nikon don't make fast normal lenses for DSLRs. > 3. Most of them have an optical viewfinders. Video cameras don't seem > to have this problem since an EVF is considered to be a feature. Why do you dislike an optical viewfinder? Do you want to eliminate the mirror flipping up and down? The mirror flipping up and down would be impractical for video, you'd have to use a beam splitter, which reduces available light. Does anyone make a high resolution display that is small enough to use on a camera? My video/still camera only captures 720x480, even in still mode, but even so the viewfinder resolution is a lot lower than that, so I can't tell how much detail I'm getting. I suppose with the 12 Mpixel (or whatever they're up to this week) sensors you can just assume you're getting a lot of detail, but I can't assume that with only 720x480. With video, even 1920x1080 isn't enough to assume you're getting the detail you want. > 4. There is probably an analog to Moore's Law for sensors. So, they > come out with a new sensor every year or two and you have to replace the > whole camera, and your old camera isn't worth much used for the same > reasons. There was an article somewhere (maybe Dan's Data?) about how the super high resolution sensors have so much noise that you may be better off with less resolution. > 5. For some reason, 24x36mm and smaller formats don't have coolers. Huh? > 7. Autofocus has its uses, but it shouldn't be at the expense of usable > manual focus. That is, digital SLRs have viewfinders that are not > really suitable for manual focusing. IIRC optical viewfinders have special patterns in the groundglass to aid focusing. But above you say you want an electronic viewfinder. I think manually focusing an electronic viewfinder would be problematic. What I'd like to see is a good interface to allow the user to select what part of the screen they want to be in focus. And have a button to semi-lock the focus. The auto focus would still track the object if it moves slightly, but is prevented from jumping to another object that is closer/farther away. Similar interface for auto exposure. > 9. I'm not certain of the reason but most digital cameras have a minimum > ISO of 100. A few are a little lower but not by much. That would be easy enough to fix with open source. And the user could program whatever bracketing scheme they want. _______________________________________________ Open-hardware mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-hardware
