David Emery OnlineCamera Software
20 November 2006
Last weeks camera post has got me thinking about the current crop of digital cameras. There are a few features that are obviously all related to the actual physical properties; the lens, the sensor side etc. But that’s only half of the story.
The software – commonly referred to as firmware – that the camera runs is almost as important. So many features a modern camera has are completely done in software; different ISO settings, for example, or manual focusing. Something increasingly frequent, however, is the purposeful limitation of software features by the camera manufacturers.
Take, for example, the Canon Powershot G7. If you read my previous post, you’ll know that it’s my current camera of choice. However, there’s been a bit of a ruckus in the digital camera fraternity about the absence of RAW support. It’s not something I care about, but some people really do, and the common consensus is that Canon left RAW support out to drive people to its more expensive DSLR offerings.
Here’s my solution; it’s not a simple one, but the effect it would have on the digital camera market would be quite interesting:
We need an open source digital camera operating system.
It’s not beyond the realms of fiction; there are plenty of lightweight versions of Linux out there that would be suitable, and the technicalities of image processing whilst complicated are a fairly well known area. Obviously working across different camera types could prove to be problematic, but it’s obvious that each manufacturer uses pretty much one OS, tailoring it to each different model.
If they can make Linux for the iPod surely someone can do it for digital cameras (where it would actually be useful).
We’d be able to get full manual options on every camera, RAW support, better video support, full control over things like noise reduction, sharpening and contrast and much more.
It seems like a huge market prime for the taking (hijacking?) by the Linux community, and no-one’s really got camera software right yet.