Tiny, Tiny Sony Digicam

Phil writes: "Check out this new digital camera prototype from Sony, it's just 2.7" wide (about the size of a piece of chewing gum) it's got a full colour VGA sensor (640 x 480) and a 0.55" LCD on the back (like a digital viewfinder)... Got to be gadget of the year if they do release it..." Now, if only it weren't saddled to the proprietary, expensive chewing-gum Memory Stick, this would jump even higher on my wishlist.

Comments

Everyone must be thinking this...

[The Iconoclast]

Q: And finally James... <hands Bond a pack of Doublemint>

Bond: Gum, Q? But I have Excellent Oral Hygiene.

Q: No James, this is a highly compact digital camera capable of storing over 100 high resolution pictures.

Bond: Indeed.

Q: Oh, and James...

Bond: Yes?

Q: No more taking pictures of the female agents and posting them on the Internet, I've been recieveing far too many complaints about that...

A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."

Re:Missing the point.

[John Whitley]

FYI, Compact Flash writes are slower than molasses in January. CF has approx. 60ms (yes _milliseconds_) per 512 byte block write latency. The napkin calculation indicates that at 5:1 compression (assuming 640x480x24bit raw) you're looking at over 20 seconds to save an image down from RAM to flash. This can be a serious impact to the design of an embedded system (such as a digital camera). Yes, you can cache images to RAM (as you must for the image compression) but the more RAM you have (i.e. more snaps before writedown) the greater the cost and shorter the battery life.

FWIW, Memory Stick has much higher write bandwidth than CF... unfortunately I don't have the figures on me at the moment.

Missing the point.

[locutus074]

Now, if only it weren't saddled to the proprietary, expensive chewing-gum Memory Stick, this would jump even higher on my wishlist.

Methinks timothy is missing the point a bit. Open hardware is always a Good Thing, but they set out to create a really small camera, didn't they? How would you create a camera that small with commonly-available, inexpensive hardware? Use PCMCIA cards? That would've at least doubled the size.

Anyway, let's hope that this new small camera will drop the prices (or at least pave the way for a price drop) on regular-sized, better-resolution digital cameras.

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