A Camera Only Frank Einstein Would Love

The bright minds at Stanford University believe they have revolutionized the digital camera industry with the, wait for it… Frankencamera! I kid you not!

It’s dubbed an open-source (oh-la-la!) camera (that looks like my laptop with a lens attached onto it) because the software will be made available for one and all to modify, customize, play with — with the hope that smart programmers will significantly enhace the firmware to do sexy things like combine two photos in-camera to increase dynamic range (which is already done in the Pentax K-7 by the way, albeit not too successfully).

That’s all we need, a reprogrammable camera. Well, open-source or not, smart programmers have already hacked Canon’s firmware to provide enhanced functionality in some of their compact PowerShot models. Any software modifications are of course constrained by the amount of on-board memory available in the camera.

I doubt anyone will come up with software that will significantly better the image quality, lower the noise, etc. that can be downloaded onto a camera (again memory constraints). I can imagine the havoc such a camera will unleash as camera owners download à-la-iphone apps onto their Frankencamera so it can do fancy in-camera editing and other time-wasters, and end up messing everything on-board. I hope the Frankencamera comes with Ctrl-Alt-Del buttons.

Ribbing aside, the Frankencamera is an important development. The platform is probably what camera manufacturers already use in one form or another to program and test their firmware, though in a proprietary format. What an open-source platform provides is an environment where any smart programmer (as opposed to only the camera manufacturers’ engineers) out there can show camera manufacturers what can be achieved — and thus put pressure on them [or should we say on their marketing people] to incorporate these advances into digital cameras.

Well done, Stanford team! Sorry for the ribbing!