Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

Karamchand asks: "Free Software and open standards are ubiquitous in the server and even desktop area. But why does nobody seem to care about openness in digital cameras? I couldn't find a single hint as to what main processor my camera uses (I guess many use ARMs and others use TI DSPs), and while searching for information about (re-)programming digital cameras, I had to give up (apart from the scriptable Digita OS which was used by some discontinued cameras by Kodak, HP et al). Do you know of any efforts in this direction, whether they are actual disassembling/programming of cameras or asking vendors to get more open?" I still have my Kodak DIGITA-based camera from several years ago and I loved the flexibility, even though the performance is poor by today's standards (long cycle times, poor battery life, etc). Why are digital camera manufacturers keeping the lid on the capabilities of their products, when digital cameras could be so much more than their film-based counterparts?

Comments

Obvious reason

[fembots]

Why are digital camera manufacturers keeping the lid on the capabilities of their products

I'm guessing any for-profit companies will be keeping the lid on the capabilities of their products, so that they can slowly roll out "new" features every quarter, and consumers will be attracted to upgrading.

when digital cameras could be so much more than their film-based counterparts?

Seriously? I would rather digital cameras function like, and only like a camera. I'm already having hard time finding a standard mobile phone that makes calls, and that's all it does.

Re:Obvious reason

[oneiron]

I think he meant that they could be 'so much more' in that they could function in camera-like ways that extend beyond the capabilities of their film-based counterparts. That's how I interpreted it, anyway.

As it is, digital cameras still can't take the place of film in all situations. 'Open' cameras could serve to narrow the gap.

Re:Obvious reason

[remigo]

> I'm already having hard time finding a standard
> mobile phone that makes calls, and that's all it
> does.

Well, you better find one fast because that whole "phone" thing is rapidly going out of style. The only way I was able to get a half-way decent phone was to buy one with a camera in it. It's an interesting little gimick but drains the battery quickly, so I almost never use it.

I had to basically change my criterion to a phone that would just RING, not play the latest hit from Top-40 land...

Re:Obvious reason

[jszymkowski]

The firmware for the Canon EOS Digital Rebel was recently hacked (by some guy in Russia IIRC) to enable functions only available on it's big brother the 20D. Besides, the 20D having a magnesium body compared to the Rebel's plastic body, there really aren't any other differences. The price difference is about $300 - $400 however.

Re:Obvious reason

[ColdWetDog]

I would wonder what's in it for the manufacturers to open the source code.... The devices are very hardware dependent (duh) and it's unlikely that anyone would hack a digicam or DLSR (digital single lens reflex) camera.

The astronomy types, however, are fond of hacking into their hardware http://www.backyardastronomy.com/chapter15/page1.h tml as their equipment tends to me more one off than the average Nikon offering.

That said, at least the Japanese camera makers (Nikon and Canon) have primitive, annoying UIs on their DLSRs. It would be wonderful to at least open a scripting language to allow a user to modify menus and functions.

Not bloody likely in my estimation, but maybe...

Re:Obvious reason

[eric_brissette]

I wouldn't necessarily think that they want to add Snake, Tetris, and an alarm clock/scheduling program to their camera. I'm guessing there are some kinda photography nerd features that could be programmed into such a camera. I'm one of those point and shoot people. Not cutting people off at the neck is the extent of my picture taking ability. I'll probably never understand what all of the settings on a $2000 camera do.. but apparently some people not only use all those features, but want to add more and customize them. It sounds like it would be very useful to a handful of consumers, but not the kind of thing that would benefit the manufacturer enough to implement such functionality.

Re:Obvious reason

[bamf]

Actually it enables a few functions from the 10D, not the 20D.

The Digital Rebal (aka 300D) is still missing quite a few functions such as second-curtain flash, selectable AF mode, has a smaller buffer, and is noticably slower than the 10D.

Re:Obvious reason

[Elwood P Dowd]

when digital cameras could be so much more than their film-based counterparts?

Seriously? I would rather digital cameras function like, and only like a camera. I'm already having hard time finding a standard mobile phone that makes calls, and that's all it does.

There are a billion interesting images I'd love to capture that would be way more feasible if I could read directly from the CCD. Time lapse animations & such. Dude never said he was trying to run a webserver. Maybe he just wants to use his camera in unanticipated ways.

That said, I don't think the pro-ams could do a better job at camera software than Canon or whoever. So unfortunately he's on a wild goose chase. But when he says "so much more than their film-based counterparts", I trust that he's still talking about producing images.

Re:Obvious reason

[galaxy300]

I bought a new Nokia 3390 on Ebay for $30 a couple of months ago. This is the most basic, easy to use and straightforward model I could find. No fancy ringtones, no camera etc. Batteries and accessories are cheap, and the thing is solid as a rock. No problems with reception, and it's not brick heavy, either.

This is because I bought a fancy, camera/color screen/PDA phone from T-Mobile when I opened my acount a year ago and it *sucked*. No reception whatsoever, random blinkouts where the OS would become responsive. Whatever - I don't need no stinkin' fancy pants phone.

Re:Obvious reason

[fitten]

There are places where you can't bring a camera, either still or movie. Granted, the number of folks who have to worry about that is relatively small, but some of us will be hurt.

Re:Obvious reason

[finkployd]

The only way I was able to get a half-way decent phone was to buy one with a camera in it. It's an interesting little gimick but drains the battery quickly, so I almost never use it.

Not only that, but some of us routinly enter secure facilities (DoD contractors and such) that simply do not allow cameras of ANY type. It is a massive pain to have to leave my cell phone at the front desk.

Finkployd

Re:Obvious reason

[radish]

You mean the 10D. The 20D hardware is significantly ahead of the 300D/Rebel (I had/have both). Bigger buffer & faster CF gives amazing burst rates, new AF arrangement & sensors, new Digic II processor gives excellent noise reduction (usable images at 1600!), etc etc.

The rebel is really nice, but even with the hacked firmware it's not really a 10D, never mind a 20D.

Re:Obvious reason

[jridley]

Yes, but that was mainly possible because the firmware had the features, they were just disabled. He only changed a few bytes.
Of course, the secret is knowing which bytes to change.

I've been running the hacked firmware for most of a year. It's been great.

Re:Obvious reason

[xThinkx]

I have a hacked d-reb, and there are still a few differences from the 10D (not 20D). Smaller buffer and lack of selectable AI Servo in cretaive modes are the most noticeable.

BUT THERE'S HOPE. The digital rebel was one of the first DSLRs that was in the ~= $1000 range, and so it's been hacked A LOT. Besides the wasia hack, there are also other numerous attempts. One thing that I read that was REAL interesting was that the camera actually runs on a DOS based system, and inside the camera were several applications, most notably camera.exe. With the ability to hack the firmware with moderate difficulty, I'm hoping soon someone will figure out some more tricks (I'd kill for AI servo in aperture and shutter priority modes). I do my best to provide feedback and ideas and even test the firmware hacks, and I think a lot of other prosumer range DSLR owners do the same

Re:Obvious reason

[jridley]

Then buy a Canon and shoot in RAW mode. It's data directly off the CCD with no processing.

FYI there is at least one piece of software, I forget the name right now, that does WAY better at certain kinds of exposures, particularly long time exposures, than Canon does. You shoot in RAW mode and then use that software to do the postprocessing that the camera would normally do, and the results are astoundingly better. Googling for the phrase "digital workflow" might help, or not, I'm brushing cobwebs from my mind... check out photo.net of luminous-landscape.com

Re:Obvious reason

[Anonymous Coward]

If the area is classified, you shouldn't have a cellphone in there anyway.

Re:Obvious reason

[Dashing Leech]

It is a massive pain to have to leave my cell phone at the front desk.

I'd find it odd that a "secure" facility would not confiscate cell phones in addition to cameras. I've been to a few secure military places and they required cell phones to be left at security.

After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words you could always transmit the same info as the camera in a few minutes (or a few seconds if you are from Newfoundland).

Re:Obvious reason

[geoffspear]

Oh please. This is Slashdot.

We all know that he wanted to run Linux on his camera, and couldn't figure out how.

Re:Obvious reason

[Threni]

> Then buy a Canon and shoot in RAW mode. It's data directly off the CCD with no
> processing.

I think he wants access to the data as the picture is being taken, so he could code his own time-lapse mode where none exists, or add movie mode, etc.

Re:Obvious reason

[DrSkwid]

Olympus digital cameras when hooked up via USB show up as external storage devices

My c-5060 also has a neat little remote control for activating the shutter

with a bit of inginuety you could rig this up for un-attended time lapse

Re:Obvious reason

[Elwood P Dowd]

Exactly. I'd like to get ccd-over-time with the shutter open. I realize that's probably not feasible with current hardware, let alone markettable, so it's kindof irrelevant to the open software question.

Re:Obvious reason

[nchip]

Canon Digital still cameras run dos, specifically datalight ROM-DOS. However, it is probably very boring to hack, since all the hardware access and UI is probably in the camera.exe, and all the dos does is boot. So you would have to reverse engineer the camera app to do any hacks. Even then, you will probably run out of RAM for anything more sophisticated.

However, most cameras will have somekind of network connectivity in future (The All devices will creep in features until they can read and send email law). It's a big chance that some vendors will end up using Linux as the base OS - The axis surveillance cams already do!. That would increase the hacking chances. How about running an tiny httpd gallery right of the camera or an ftp server :-P

Re:Obvious reason

[Elwood P Dowd]

Can you read out high-res images without closing the shutter?

Re:Obvious reason

[severoon]

The Digital Rebel and the 20D are totally different animals. 6.2 vs 8.2 megapixels, the 20D has more advanced noise reduction, etc. I could go on...

In any case, I'm pretty sure that if camera companies opened up their platforms to open source, for instance, cameras would quickly start to have all sorts of strange features. Not that I'm against that, someone could come out with something cool...but I doubt I would load anything not approved by Canon onto my 20D, personally.

Re:Obvious reason

[pchan-]

As an embedded systems engineer, I'll tell you why:

1) The firmware is highly hardware dependant. You will not be porting this to any other hardware, you won't use it anywhere else. It is of little use to anyone not using your same PCB.
2) There is proprietary, licensed software included, that cannot be redistributed. Particularly the following:
(a) The focus control software (this is the DSP software that figures out when the image is in focus).
(b) The CCD filtering software.
(c) The OS, if any, may be licensed from a third party.
3) There is no way to interface to these devices without a proprietary hardware device costing possibly thousands of Dollars. For example, a common camera chip is the TI DSC24, which can be reprogrammed via a specific JTAG emulator, and requires TI's Code Composer Studio compiler to develop for the DSP part of it. Even if you had this stuff, you won't find a JTAG header on the production boards. This is not a Tivo hack, the number of people that would be able to actually apply a hack to this device is limited to the people who can solder a JTAG interface, or desolder the flash and reprogram it on a flash programmer. This means that even if one guy in Norway can do something cool with this camera, he can't share it with the world.

Re:Obvious reason

[default luser]

No no, most DoD contractors have many small closed areas within a particular building, with the rest of the space being open and unclassified.

To be a DoD contractor, however, they cannot allow video cameras or tape recorders into ANY part of the building, open or closed. Cell phones are typically allowed, as well as pagers/blackberries.

As for closed areas, it all depends on the contracts being worked within. For example, in the closed area in which I work, employees can bring in cell phones, but they must be turned off. Contractors and visitors must leave theirs at the door. Other more stringent closed areas don't even allow employees to carry cell phones in.

Re:Obvious reason

[Trejkaz]

Ignoring the fact that there are still quite a few phones left that only make calls and do "phone stuff", you can get camera phones for well under $100 new now, so why would you care? Some of them are even so small (e.g. T610) that there would be nothing gained by removing the camera.

Re:Obvious reason

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to get ccd-over-time with the shutter open. I realize that's probably not feasible with current hardware, let alone markettable, so it's kindof irrelevant to the open software question.

This would actually be pretty difficult. CCD's don't really work that way (but maybe that's what you meant by not feasible with current hardware). They're like bins that fill up with light, but they're dumped out every time you read them. This wouldn't cause a major problem, i.e. you could just read over and over as quickly as possible and add the results together, except that you introduce "shot noise" each time you read out the CCD. Some of this would average out when adding together all the short readouts, but the noise would be a lot higher in the final image that in an image collected in one shot for the same total collection time.

Re:Obvious reason

[esanbock]

Indeed it does run DOS. I recently hacked mine to play Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

Re:Obvious reason

[rainman_bc]

Recently? This Blog says it's been around since April last year. It's just been perfected recently.

There's more features in the 20D that can't be enabled. The 20D has way more Autofocus points than the Digital Rebel too. As well, the 20D does a much better job with the autofocus in low light conditions.

Re:Obvious reason

[MightyMartian]

Oh come on! Don't you want a camera that can make calls? Don't you want to play video games on your camera? Don't you want to be able to port Linux to your camera and run emacs? Don't you want your camera to be able to make WiFi links to Blackberries? Don't you want your camera to play MP3s?

Re:Obvious reason

[rob_squared]

Yes, and I want legs that are *only* for walking. And while I'm at it, hands that can *only* grab cans of soda. Some features are actually useful!

Re:Obvious reason

[Xyrus]

PROFIT.

Prime example, the Digital Rebel. Cannon deliberately disabled some features that this camera could handle so that it wouldn't compete with the 10D. If you wanted those features, they wanted you to pay $500 more.

Unfortunately for them, they underestimated the desire of the consumers for pushing the limits. A guy in Russia realized that they were using a pc-dos based OS, hacked around a bit, and discovered all the little goodies packed away in the camera.

I've been attempting to discover the intricacies of the D70. Though I've managed to figure out a lot of info so far about the camera, deciphering the firmware is more of a challenge (uses two different processors).

I believe that alot of features can be added to comera's if the firware was open. But it's not likely to happen. After all, why would a company want to give up making $500 for a couple lines of assembler code?

~X~

Re:Obvious reason

[luvirini]

and taking your cell phone to a movie theater could get you a long jail term in California.

Re:Obvious reason

[DrSkwid]

no, only the data on the storage cards is available, not the in memory buffer

Re:Obvious reason

[imroy]

DOS? Wow. So does that mean the cameras are using some sort of x86-compatible processor, or is it some sort of weird non-x86 version of DOS? The datalight page didn't say anything about processors. It's funny reading that press release (your first link). A company rep says that the use of DOS is on the rise. *shiver* Hopefully with the increased need for network access (bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet) and associated services (like small web servers, SMB) we will se more Linux usage in small devices. I mean, sure, those things can be done in DOS or other embedded OS's. But it's just not as flexible or powerful. Or easy. Why go and develop your own USB stack or web server, or license someone else's, when all that stuff is available for free (and royalty-free) with Linux? The only difference might be processor power. But if you can fit an x86-clone in a camera, surely you can do the same with an ARM or MIPS processor.

Re:Obvious reason

[phsdv]

As an electronics engineer with a few years of embedded engineering experience, I do not agree with your statement about JTAG. What you are telling is correct, however most modern cameras can be programmed by putting a special named file on your flash card and by selecting the right commands in the menu you can reprogram your OS or firmware in the camera.

On the Nikon D70 for example there are even 2 different firmwares you can update. Does anyone know which 2 processors are used in the D70? I understand one is used for the user interface and the other for the signal processing(DSP)

So no technical reason to stop us disassembling the code (lateste update for example) and make some changes or extensions and reprogram your camera.

With an JTAG connection debugging would be way easier. Although, we might be able to use the USB port for feeding debuging data back to a PC.

The only real problem I see, is if you really mess up the firmware, you might block the possibility to reprogram the firmware and you end up with a non functional camera...

In the case of the D70 we could start with the DSP only, assuming the other processor can still reprogram the firmware in case of an 'accident'.

Re:Obvious reason

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

Way ahead of you... The new top of the line Nikon has FTP over 802.11

Re:Obvious reason

[pchan-]

Well, firmware updating does take care of dissemination of new software once it is created. However, have you ever tried writing new code and debugging it via flash updates? I have (while testing the in-system programming feature of one of our boards). Let me tell you, it is painful. And every time you screw something up that causes the software to fail, you have to wipe and rewrite the flash through a debugging interface. Otherwise, one typo and your camera is toast and you will have to desolder the flash and find a flash programmer, or you're back to your jtag/debugger interface. Is it possible? Yes. Is it a good idea? No. Not exactly the ideal solution to open-sourcing their firmware.

Re:Obvious reason

[finkployd]

It is much easier to discretly snap photos with a camera phone and not be detected than it is to call someone and start describing everything you see I think someone would notice if I came upon some classified documents and began reading them aloud into my phone.

After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words you could always transmit the same info as the camera in a few minutes

This relies on the faulty assumtion that an old folk saying is true.

Finkployd

Re:Obvious reason

[lee7guy]

What is the point of visiting a top secret DoD building if you can't take photos proving you were there? :-)

Re:Obvious reason

[lee7guy]

Lesson to learn: Never visit a secure military place.

How are they to now you don't have a photographic memory and require you to leave your brain on the way out?

Re:Obvious reason

[dJCL]

And the reason I would love to hack the firmware on my A80 would be to allow me to use RAW images with it. It mentions them in the manual, and the software supports it, but there is no option to save as RAW that I have found anywhere in the camera or online...

JC

Re:Obvious reason

[brianosaurus]

The cool thing about open systems is that you can do something with it that you find interesting, even if it is not marketable.

If the capability is in the hardware (not saying it is, but IF it is), then its quite relevant to the open software question. Marketability is irrelevant if you can add the feature you want to your own camera.

The problem is that Canon (or whoever) think they have something really special in their software, even though the software is useless without their hardware device. Hardware (including optics) is what (really*) differentiates one camera from another. The firmware is what makes it all work together, but it isn't part of my purchase decision (since most price-comparable cameras have pretty comparable features).

Once they realize that, opening the source (or at least some of it, with APIs to access any proprietary hardware-access libraries (ala their proprietary CCD filtering that makes the images look like they came from a Canon camera, or whatever) shouldn't really be an issue.

* - granted there are some software-only differences. Canon's G2 and G3 have virtually identical specs, but the G3 has newer software. My friend who bought a G2 a few months before the G3 was announced was kind of pissed that there wasn't an upgrade since the hardware was the same (based on specs and the identical cases, though I believe we later discovered there are some internal differences). I can't imagine any G2 owners upgraded to a G3, so Canon's software enhancements wouldn't have earned them much money than if they had stayed with the G2; the same people that bought a G3 would have bought the G2, since the cameras are identical to the consumer. In fact, they might have bought G2s on closeout, so Canon loses the G3 premium.

Re:Obvious reason

[dave_f1m]

And as for (a) and (b), the those 2 software elements help *define* the camera.

Re:Obvious reason

[ipfwadm]

As it is, digital cameras still can't take the place of film in all situations. 'Open' cameras could serve to narrow the gap.

I don't see how an open camera could make digital do anything that it currently cannot, that film can. An exposure is based on a combination of three things, that's it: aperture, shutter speed, and sensitivity (ISO speed). All other features that the camera provides are just fluff, and are certainly not film-specific. I imagine the vast majority of digital cameras allow you to adjust these 3 settings; I know the two I've owned do. If you want to adjust these settings and your current camera doesn't allow you to, you're better off buying a new camera, not hacking the one you have -- there's probably plenty of other features you're missing as well.

If your camera offers a raw format (again, the two I've owned do), these raw files will contain the EXACT values that came off the sensor. If you have a better processing algorithm, you can implement it on your computer, no need to try to shove it into the camera (Canon at least implements their Bayer-reconstruction algorithm and other processing [sharpness, white balance, etc] in hardware on the camera, so you wouldn't be able to replace this even if you wanted to).

Besides, the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film. It still doesn't match the resolution of large-format, but an 'open' camera isn't going to do anything to help that. What exact situations are you referring to that an 'open' camera could help digital catch up in?

Re:Obvious reason

[Tomfrh]

I think you mean the Canon 10D, not the 20D.

The 10D is the older 6 megapixel DSLR.

The 20D is the newer 8 megapixel model.

Turning a Digital Rebel into a 20D would be quite an achievement!!

Re:Obvious reason

[oneiron]

Creatively and technically speaking, there are a lot of things you can do in a dark room that will probably never be duplicated by any digital camera. The creative possibilities of an 'open' camera could open up new fields of opportunity that might offer more interesting alternatives to such techniques. Nothing specific, really...just possibilities that could raise the status of digital from photographic artist's perspective.

Re:Obvious reason

[jimfrost]

An exposure is based on a combination of three things, that's it: aperture, shutter speed, and sensitivity (ISO speed).

While this is true, the image is more than just the exposure. You get color and intensity sensitivity variations between different kinds of films, for instance. And grain, of course.

If your camera offers a raw format (again, the two I've owned do), these raw files will contain the EXACT values that came off the sensor. If you have a better processing algorithm, you can implement it on your computer, no need to try to shove it into the camera

There's some truth to this, too, but what if you don't want to post-process to get a particular effect (eg emulate T-Max film)? Some people really hate photoshopping every image. This is why there are so many parameters to tune in pro-level digicams.

Besides, the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film.

That may be the general consensus amongst laymen, but not amongst photographers. Not yet, anyway. Amongst the two serious limitations of digital versus film today are limited gamut and severely limited exposure lattitude.

It's technically possible to correct both of those, of course, for a price.

But for the majority of photographic situations it's true that there's really no need for film anymore, and a lot of economies in digital.

Re:Obvious reason

[multiOSfreak]

There are places where you can't bring a camera, either still or movie.

Very soon, that will include the NYC subway system and buses. Already, you can't take photos or videos while traveling on/in any Port Authority bridge or tunnel in NYC. I should know, I got pulled over, questioned, and then the cops watched the video I shot and then erased it before giving back my camera.

For info on the subway/bus photo ban, check out http://www.straphangers.org/.

Re:Obvious reason

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

your brain still would need a printer.

Like the poster above i fall in this problem, i work for a defense company, and we can have phones in work, not really a issue, but i can't take mine in cause it has a camera on it. And i could care less about it having the camera, i got it cause it was what i wanted, just had the drag of having a lot of other crap on it i didn't want.

Re:Obvious reason

[notthe9]

Creatively and technically speaking, there are a lot of things you can do in a dark room that will probably never be duplicated by any digital camera

There are technologies that you can use to develop prints from digital data in a dark room by the same chemical processes.

Re:Obvious reason

[plover]

Yup, I bought my T637 even though it included a camera. I really only bought it for the Bluetooth and GSM, but was unable to find a phone that didn't include the camera.

And so today, for the very first time, I actually used the camera like in the old TV commercial featuring Siegfried and Roy. We were walking in the skyways during lunch, and I spotted a giant red Elmo being led around by a cute handler. Apparently Sesame Street Live is in town and this was a publicity thing. I pulled out the camera and took Elmo's picture, and sent it to my wife.

I got no reaction. She thought I just downloaded a picture of Elmo and sent it to her. :-( So much for Truth in Advertising.

Re:Obvious reason

[Kitsune]

That may be the general consensus amongst laymen, but not amongst photographers.

*nods*

I enlarged one of my 300d images to a 24"x36" and it was quite easy to see the individual pixels. Perhaps in the latest of the professional cameras (Canon 1ds comes to mind) it's possible to get no pixelation but for work that ends up in larger prints, digital doesn't quite yet cut it.

Can picture some fun stuff though that might be fun if it were possible to hack a camera though, such as how it'd be nice if it were possible to stuff a CF wireless card into the slot instead of a flash card.

Re:Obvious reason

[jimfrost]

I enlarged one of my 300d images to a 24"x36" and it was quite easy to see the individual pixels.

Hah, I wouldn't have even tried that :-). I max out at 11x17, give or take.

Can picture some fun stuff though that might be fun if it were possible to hack a camera though, such as how it'd be nice if it were possible to stuff a CF wireless card into the slot instead of a flash card.

Oh, wireless has long been possible on the high-end Kodak cameras. Possibly others, I never checked. But the problem I have with that is transfer rate; even at 54Mbps you're talking about more than a second a frame for one of those 14mpel cameras, and that's if everything's ideal. More realistically you're looking at 5+secs. Having a 300D myself I can tell you that 5sec save times suck; no matter how big your buffer you're gonna run out sooner or later and then you get to twiddle your thumbs forever waiting for the camera to catch up.

Which is, I suppose, one more plus for film at affordable price points -- although that Canon that sustains 8fps is really nifty if you've got a half dozen kilobucks burning a hole in your pocket. It's almost like a motion picture camera.

Re:Obvious reason

[AmigaBen]

Regarding printing 300D images to a max of 11x17...

Nonsense. Of course, there's a lot of factors that come into play, but cameras like the 1Ds have since surpassed 35mm film and are rivaling medium format. The 300D has much of the detail of film. Maybe not the detail of your best film in your best cameras, but alas..

The trick is quite simply that if you're going to output a large print, -UPSIZE THEM- first. Interpolate them up using bicubic resizing in Photoshop. It won't magically create detail like the uber-elite stuff on TV shows do, but it's what you need to do if printing large.

Course, you could use those half dozen kilobucks and buy a 1Ds Mark II. But you're still gonna need to upsize if you're printing a poster. :)

Re:Obvious reason

[Feztaa]

Well, there are situations where a camera maker will release two identical cameras, except one is firmware crippled and cheaper. Same physical camera, just that one has less features to let you do stuff. Open firmware would let you turn the firmware-crippled one into the better one, but then that's just another reason for the camera makes to not open the firmware.

Re:Obvious reason

[Kosi]

It is a massive pain to have to leave my cell phone at the front desk.

Then leave it in your pocket.

Re:Obvious reason

[finkployd]

Right, because it is always good to piss off security folks at a military facility.

It is useless to me even if I keep it in my pockect. Let's say I put it in my pocket and set it to vibrate. So far so good. Then I get a call. I cannot really answer it without pulling it out and risking that someone notices that it is a camera phone (they look fairly obvious). It would have been much better just to not get the stupid camera phone, I never use the crummy camera feature anyway.

Finkployd

Re:Obvious reason

[hcdejong]

Duh, that's what Photoshop is for. A digital camera isn't the place to do dark room-type manipulations.

Re:Obvious reason

[Kosi]

If they start pissing me off by wanting my phone, yes!

For getting caught with it: just pretend the call was confidential, you have to be alone in the room to answer it. .mil guys must understand this. :-)

And yes, if I could have gotten the T610 without that shitty excuse for a camera, I'd gladly have taken it.

Re:Obvious reason

[sjwt]

I'm guessing any for-profit companies will be keeping the lid on the capabilities of their products, so that they can slowly roll out "new" features every quarter, and consumers will be attracted to upgrading.

Sure, they try, but things do get hacked, for example the EOS300D (Digital rebel to you US'ers) has had its firmware hacked for quite a while, as its the only Digital cammer i own, its the only one i pay attchen to, but im sure theres plenty more out there.

This hack gives many of the features of the more expsensive 10D..

To quote
"Did you know your 10D and 300D run DOS? "

Some of the hacks are things like changing what the defults of the buttons are, to allowing flash sync. when you couldnt before, mirror locking and alternating between 1/3rd and 1/2 stops, all ranter usefull featuers that whent avaible in the 300d, but should of been.

Unfortanly the 4 FPPS and slower file writing couldnt be hacked, or no ones found out a decent and stable overclocking, this is your task, should you chose to accept.

Re:Obvious reason

[PaleGreen]

I'm glad I grabbed three Audiovox 8600's for my Verizon family plan. It's a great little handset and was the only one from VZW that met my criteria:

1) No camera
2) Not "all-digital". Tri-mode phones are still critical for me - good old AMPS hasn't gone away yet.
3) Speakerphone

The style, great LCD & diminuitive size of the phone are just bonuses.

Re:Obvious reason

[jimfrost]

It's true that the prosumer digicams are rivalling 35mm film; I find 6mpel to be roughly the same resolution as a typical ISO200 film, and as you say you can do much better than that with the professional models.

But let's look at that interpolation process, shall we?

Let's take 300dpi as a modest target resolution for printing. Your typical prosumer SLR is putting out roughly a 3k by 2k image (never mind that even that image is the result of Bayer mask interpolation; you've already lost color resolution versus film). That means that at 300dpi the biggest image you get before interpolation is necessary (and quality starts to drop) is roughly 7x10.

At 11x17 fully 65% of your image is the result of interpolation. Is that going to be visible on the output? Sure it is, even with an excellent interpolator -- TANSTAAFL applies. But I would agree that it's going to be quite reasonable, and in fact I do that kind of enlargement all the time in my printing.

Unfortunately quality drops off with the square of the increase in dimensions, it's not linear. A whopping 96% of his 24x36 image was guesswork by the interpolator. Ouch!

And all of this presumes you're starting from raw format. If you shot JPEG your effective resolution is reduced by at least half, if not more. I find that a 6mpel image at only 5x7 clearly shows loss of quality using fine JPEG (ie every random person I asked to compare RAW versus JPEG prints could easily tell me which was better).

Whether the print quality of a significant enlargement of a digital frame is worse than a similar 35mm enlargement is debatable, as grain is readily visible in 11x17 prints too, but the different character of pixellation versus grain makes it less pleasing in my opinion (but maybe that's a trained response, it's hard to say).

In any case I note that quite a lot of film photographers do not consider 35mm to be good enough at sizes much larger than 8x10; that is why they tend to use medium format cameras when intending to create such prints. I think, then, that that gives you a good idea of what kind of enlargements you can expect from digital.

In the end the acceptability is in the eye of the beholder, so Your Mileage May Vary. What I would suggest is doing your own experiments in reducing the frame, then enlarging it and printing it, and compare against the original. When you start to notice the difference, that's as much as you want to do. For me, with a full 6mpel frame, that limit is around 11x17.

Re:Obvious reason

[ipfwadm]

I enlarged one of my 300d images to a 24"x36" and it was quite easy to see the individual pixels.

Ummm, have you ever tried enlarging 35mm to that size? It looks incredibly grainy. I have a 16x20 from ISO200 35mm film on my wall. It looks no better (a little worse, actually) than the 16x20 I made from a *three* megapixel camera.

Re:Obvious reason

[ipfwadm]

Yeah, yeah, I know all about the Digital Rebel and the 10D. I have one, in fact, complete with the hacked firmware. That wasn't my question though. I wanted to know what an open camera was going to do that would let digital "catch up" to film, which was the assertion of the GP.

Re:Obvious reason

[ipfwadm]

There's some truth to this, too, but what if you don't want to post-process to get a particular effect (eg emulate T-Max film)? Some people really hate photoshopping every image.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Personally I would much rather shoot raw, thus keeping the data as it came off the sensor, and then if I decide I don't like the T-Max emulation and would rather have, say, Velvia emulation (might as well go the exact opposite of B&W film :-), I can do that. In other words I would much rather have this as an option in my raw converter, not in my camera.

I said:
the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film.

And you said:
But for the majority of photographic situations it's true that there's really no need for film anymore

How are those two statements significantly different from each other? But for some reason you contradicted me by saying that "photographers" don't believe that digital is there yet. I think there's a whole lot of pros out there using digital that would be offended by you denying them the term "photographer".

Amongst the two serious limitations of digital versus film today are limited gamut and severely limited exposure lattitude.

The first might possibly be able to be fixed by an open camera (when combined with other tools to support it); the second most certainly is not going to be fixed by an open camera.

Re:Obvious reason

[AmigaBen]

I can respect this response. And certainly in depends upon your expectations and also what you're comparing to. I can also respect that for trained eyes, 11x17 is the outer limit for a high quality print from a quality 6MP shot. (Big difference between 'digicam' 6MP and dSLR 6MP, especially depending on ISO)

But I take exception to this:

I find that a 6mpel image at only 5x7 clearly shows loss of quality using fine JPEG (ie every random person I asked to compare RAW versus JPEG prints could easily tell me which was better).

Wow.. your 'every random person' must be FAR more discerning than the random person around here. Two factors at play to my taking issue with this. First is the people. Heck, your average random person seems to be barely able to make out the difference between a print from a webcam and a 1Ds. Secondly, the actual quality issue. I assume by 'fine jpeg' you mean the best (or close to it) quality jpeg option you have available to you. Course, I'm also assuming by 'print' you mean photographic process output rather than a high-quality inkjet. Two assumptions already. But working from that basis... there is no way your statement could hold up. I'm not even sure a close analysis of said 5x7's would show the difference, though I haven't put it to the test.

By saying this, I don't mean to disparage RAW or imply that jpeg doesn't lose quality. Simply that I think you've gotten over-zealous in your point, or that something wasn't even-handed in your test. Or I've made multiple bad assumptions.

Re:Obvious reason

[oneiron]

I know that's what photoshop is for...currently. You seem to have it all figured out. I'm envious.

Re:Obvious reason

[jimfrost]

Personally I would much rather shoot raw, thus keeping the data as it came off the sensor, and then if I decide I don't like the T-Max emulation and would rather have, say, Velvia emulation (might as well go the exact opposite of B&W film :-), I can do that. In other words I would much rather have this as an option in my raw converter, not in my camera.

I think exactly the same way, but that does create a step in your workflow -- a step that didn't exist in the film world, and that adds cost to the process. I could entirely see some photographers wanting to skip that process (especially as it's quite time consuming, look at how long C1 takes to convert a frame).

You: the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film.

Me: But for the majority of photographic situations it's true that there's really no need for film anymore

You: How are those two statements significantly different from each other?

"The majority of situations" is not the same as "every application that mere photographic mortals care about."

For instance, I don't shoot sunrises that often but the limited lattitude of digital makes it difficult to get certain effects (like the bright colors of the sky combined with the wash of light over the scenery). In film you could take one frame and then bring out the subtle parts during print. In digital the only way to do it is take two frames at different exposures and composite them. If there's motion crossing the line between the bright and dark portions then compositing is not going to work out so well.

Also, the state of digital right now is such that it's difficult to rival the fineness of medium format, and for large format it's pretty much still-life-only. Digital at those resolutions is prohibitively expensive in any case. If the target of the print is large format (poster, wall, or billboard) then digital is not a very good choice.

Thus even though digital works fine in the majority of situations, there are still plenty of times you're still going to want film.

As for the inferred slight against professionals, none was intended. I shoot professionally and I only shoot digital. But I am aware that there are cases in which the format will not work, or will not work well. I have to take that into consideration when I'm selecting the jobs I'll do.

[limited gamut] might possibly be able to be fixed by an open camera (when combined with other tools to support it)

The gamut limitation is largely a result of the limitations of the sensor mask. If you want a wider gamut, you need a mask with more color channels. You're not going to fix that with an open camera.

Really what an open camera would get us is the ability to work around artificial limitations imposed on products by marketing trying to hit price points. For example, there is really no reason why the EOS-300D cannot support all of the modes of the EOS-10D -- except that if they gave you that flexibility, they'd sell fewer 10Ds. An open camera would allow aftermarket enhancements.

That is extremely consumer friendly, but not manufacturer friendly, as it makes hardware the only significant product discriminator. Hardware is a lot more expensive to change than software, so it's easy to see why they wouldn't want to do that even if you ignore competitive situations where you'd prefer not to give away your laboriously written code to your competitors.

Re:Obvious reason

[jimfrost]

ig difference between 'digicam' 6MP and dSLR 6MP, especially depending on ISO

DSLRs are, to me, a class of "digicam." I was actually considering it from the DSLR angle. If you're talking lower end cameras the principal problem is crappy lenses; they're so bad that you can "recover" image detail lost by noise at high ISOs 'cause there wasn't going to be much real detail there anyway.

But on to my real reason for replying:

...your 'every random person' must be FAR more discerning than the random person around here.

I doubt that very much, given my sample :-).

While I agree with you that if you give someone a shot and say "does this look good" then by and large they're not going to notice subtle problems. But if you give them two images side by side and ask them to compare, many will be able to see differences.

This is what I did. I took a number of 6mpel RAW frames and converted to TIFF and fine JPEG. I then printed them both in several sizes and showed them to people and asked "which is better." At 4x6 nobody could tell the difference. But at 5x7 not one person has ever selected the JPEG image as superior. That is pretty definitive in my book.

To be honest, I was surprised by this result -- but I cannot deny it. To be honest, though, I shoot almost entirely in RAW simply for the enhanced exposure lattitude.

Re:Obvious reason

[moeffju]

Ah, c'mon, not even DOS could run Ultima VII - The Black Gate right! (yes, config.sys, I'm looking at you!)

Re:Obvious reason

[Dashing Leech]

"This relies on the faulty assumtion that an old folk saying is true."

Or a subtle tongue-in-cheek sense or humour.

Re:Obvious reason

[tmasssey]

I'll take a SWAG and say that you're talking about Vuescan from .... It is *fabulous* scanner software that also doubles as tremendous "mathematical darkroom" software. It allows you to do all of the bulk corrections (whitepoint, color balancing, brightness based on histograms, etc.), and then you can move to Photoshop for the artistic stuff.

No connection other than a very satisfied customer. Dirt cheap for what it does.

Re:Obvious reason

[Feztaa]

Well, open firmware isn't going to magically make your digicam better than a film camera. But in the event that it de-cripples your camera, that is an improvement in the camera. "Narrowing the gap", so to speak.

because

[spac3manspiff]

They dont want you to port mario 3 to it. I guess

Re:because

[snade]

But another NetBSD port would be very very interesting. :-)

no, not really..

[dougnaka]

I only buy digital cameras with Compact Flash, and use my usb2 reader... Am I missing any features by doing this as opposed to plugging directly in..?

Re:no, not really..

[Ark42]

I wonder about that. I've never tried anything but my CF reader either. Can digital cameras (like my powershot G5) act as really nice quality webcams if hooked directly with usb?

Re:no, not really..

[Ryuu]

With the two digital Nikon cameras I've had (E4300 and E2500), no.

Re:no, not really..

[jimicus]

IME, not really. However, it's getting hard to find a compact digital camera which takes CompactFlash. It's still the standard in digital SLRs though.

Re:no, not really..

[radish]

Not usually (but sometimes). There's rarely any difference between a card reader connection and a USB connection. With my cameras (a collection of Canons) you can edit some camera settings via USB, and also do things like remote triggering.

Re:no, not really..

[enigmals1]

Yes, my new Fujifilm E550 actually has a "Web" setting to turn it into a web camera. Pretty sweet!

Re:no, not really..

[scragz]

My Canon 10D's software has some abilities to do a remote capture, kind of like a web cam. It's so you can have your laptop attached to the camera and preview your pictures much easier than on the little LCD screen on the camera and check for correct white balance, exposure, etc.

Unfortunately, my laptop runs MEPIS, and the software is Windows only. Might work with WINE but I haven't tried.

Re:no, not really..

[cetan]

consult your documentation?

Re:no, not really..

[sacherjj]

Some cameras can be remote controlled via a USB connection. This usually required a proprietary program from the camera maker. For example, I can connect my Nikon D70 (DSLR) to the computer and tell it all the settings I want for the picture and then take the picture and download in real time (all from the computer interface). It would require hacking this protocal to make a web cam out of it. Unless you need a 6 Mp web cam, it would be a waste of the camera as well.

Re:no, not really..

[DrSkwid]

my olympus c-5060 (like all of their afaik) look like USB mass storage devices when connected via USB. No drivers required (beyond supporting USB mass storage devices which almost all OSes do already).

I have a script that moves all of the images off and puts them on my web server in their own folder, makes thumbnails etc. all in one go, just plug in the camera and go make a cuppa, all done.

pretty much the same as extracting the CF card and doing the same with a reader but the c-5060 takes a CF and SD card simultaneously and makes it si I can't forget to put the cards back in (a *very* likely occurence =)

Re:no, not really..

[kv9]

you could try gphoto2

Re:no, not really..

[sndtech]

I have Finepix S20 pro and if you hook it up via the USB connection you can use it as a high quality web cam, if you use the firewire connection you can do some funky HiDef video stuff with it I believe, as my comp doesnt have a firewire interface I can't test it

Re:no, not really..

[vettemph]

>it would be a waste of the camera as well.

Not really a waste.
1. You would save on the cost of a webcam.
2. It is still a camera when you need one.
3. You can control Brightness, contrast depth of field and zoom much better than with a typical webcam.
4. looks impressive sitting atop your monitor.

The only downside I see is if you want to keep your fancy camera hidden away and protected from little finger prints.

Re:no, not really..

[RotJ]

Many cameras, like the Canon Powershots, have TV out hookups that allow you to display whatever is on the LCD on a TV, for slideshow purposes. If you have a TV card in your PC, you can hook the camera to the card, and use the feed as your webcam.

Re:no, not really..

[phsdv]

A web cam with a DSLR would not work. Although, actually it might, but you need to lock up the mirror. And the camera is not really build for doing so for long times. For the D70 it is possible to lock up the mirror for dust cleaning purposses.But I always try to keep the mirror up for the shortest time possible. I doubt the camera would survive the mirror to be locked up for very long times.

Does anyone has some experience with this on a D70?

Re:no, not really..

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Cheap Concord EyeQ models work fine as webcams, though good luck getting the angle right. Quality isnt as good as you'd hope, probably due to lighting, but it works. You can probably find them for about $40 at walmart.

Re:no, not really..

[Flexagon]

From the grandparent:

I only buy digital cameras with Compact Flash, and use my usb2 reader... Am I missing any features by doing this as opposed to plugging directly in..?

I also transfer only via CF through my laptop, even though the camera's USB interface is much simpler. The reason? The camera's software conveniently rotates any images based on the camera's sensor, but it doesn't do the rotate losslessly. I would much rather take the extra steps involved (remove card from camera, insert into PC card adapter, insert into laptop, transfer, remove, remove, run any of a number of free programs that can rotate JPEG images losslessly; versus plug in USB, point-'n-click). I also don't appreciate the often proprietary, unlikely-to-be-updated bundled image organizers that refuse to accept your images from other cameras or sources, or even one of its own images that's made a trip through an image editor. I'd rather choose my own that works properly. The "experience" (to use MS-speak) is definitely much nicer using a USB connection, but since the reason one gets a camera is ultimately the images, I put up with more workflow steps and forget about the lost "features".

I do worry about wearing out the camera's CF socket over time, particularly given the size constraints of cameras. I bent a pin in a handheld system's PC Card slot once, despite being careful all the time; I had to have it fixed twice, once by getting the motherboard replaced.

If the camera's drivers and/or the OS allow the camera to appear as an external drive, then you can still get unmolested copies and avoid the CF card shuffle. But I'll need an OS upgrade before that'll work for me.

From the parent:

Can digital cameras ... act as really nice quality webcams if hooked directly with usb?

Some can and some can't. My daughter's cheap Concord EyeQ works just fine; she even used it with NetMeeting. But some don't. To be effective, you need two things: 1) an AC adapter, since such use drains the battery fast; my daughter's Concord doesn't. 2) A programming or scripting hook to control the camera.

For the G5, it looks like you could use its bundled RemoteCapture program and use its Interval Timer Shooting feature. Or, if you have Windows XP and it understands the G5, you could use the Webcam Timershot Powertoy here. But I haven't used either of those yet, so you're on your own.

Re:no, not really..

[sacherjj]

It would not work as a video web cam. It would work as a still web cam. And why I said it was a waste, is that the mirror will slap up with each web cam picture. It is a physical thing. While I have taken over 20k images with my D70, I would want to relegate a $1000 camera to web cam use where images are snapped every second or so, only to be resized down to 640x480 or smaller. This is a waste IMHO.

Re:no, not really..

[phsdv]

yes of course it is a waste, but we are on /. right? You might not need to slap up the mirror up for each photo, do it once and then you only need to release the shutter. They are probably independed.

Camera hardware

[chris09876]

Are you planning on writing some custom software to run on your camera? Heh, I'll never stop to be amazed by the creativity of some people! Digital cameras are like Macs - they 'just work'. I haven't heard of any efforts to customize them, or build an open one.

Re:Camera hardware

[YetAnotherName]

Right, they do exactly what they need to do. Some better than others, to be sure (c.f. Olympus's user interface, which is horrid, compared to, say, FujiFilm's).

More than that, they have standard interfaces for getting data in and out: USB, firewire, or a removable memory card. For that reason more than any other the "openness" and "hackability" of the firmware is not an issue.

Re:Camera hardware

[jdcook]

The Canon Digital Rebel (a/k/a 300D) is in many ways a crippled version of the Canon 10D. A Russian hacker developed a version of the firmware that unlocks much of the hidden potential of this camera.

Re:Camera hardware

[dabraun]

It also sports some improvements over the 10D and a cheaper body.

The software is part of the price tag. Microsoft sells XP Pro and Home for different amounts despite the fact that it costs the same to press one CD or the other. It costs more to develop the pro version, to support the pro version, and it allows them to sell into multiple markets.

That said, if Canon included all of the 10D firware features in the software that they installed on the Rebels and just flipped some bits to disable certain features ... well then anyone who is changing those bits back on their own device is just making use of what they bought (though asking for warranty service after hacking the device like this is a stretch.) If someone actually took the firmware from a 10D and copied it onto their Rebel then that might be approaching 'pirating' of the software.

Re:Camera hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

He is going to do nothing, if he was not curious enough to open up his camera and discover at least what cpu it's using, I dobut he is going to do anything whatsoever. I can't believe this article was posted by slashdot. Are we not suppose to be nerds, what happened to taking apart things? Asking slashdot what cpu's digital cameras use is just so not geek.

Re:Camera hardware

[dhilvert]

"Digital cameras are like Macs - they 'just work'."

This is not true for specialized applications. For example, it is generally not straightforward to automatically capture sequences of exposures with varying shutter speeds and aperture sizes. Also, certain information available to the camera, such as characterization of noise, is generally not trivially accessible.

"I haven't heard of any efforts to customize them, or build an open one."

Corey Manders, at the EyeTap lab at the University of Toronto, is developing a custom library for the Nikon D2H digital SLR. Limited details are here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=libd2h

Re:Camera hardware

[jridley]

You don't get out much then. I've seen a lot of hacks, particularly in the cheaper cameras. There have been entire articles here on slashdot about hacking disposable digitals.

Re:Camera hardware

[KI0PX]

I just came from a research meeting where we were discussing which digital camera to buy - and yes, we want to customize it, and open specifications would help us tremendously. We are working on diagnosing melanoma (deadly skin cancer, or if you're Peter Griffin, another word for "sexified") by taking infrared images of skin lesions. We have very specific digital camera needs - we must be able to control many aspects of the camera through the serial/usb port and have the ability to remove the infrared blocking filter. Eventually we intend on selling the cameras with specialized hardware to doctors.

Our current Nikon 950, which is becoming obsolete, has some wonderful free software known as photopc that can control the camera. This software has been extremely helpful. If only every digital camera had protocols as well-known as the 950, my job would be much easier. Kudos to the smart guys who snooped the serial line!

Re:Camera hardware

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

He better watch out if he is planning to visit the USA, especially Las Vegas (where another Russian hacker was arrested and charged with a felony for liberating an Adobe e-book format).

Re:Camera hardware

[emjoi_gently]

I can understand why people would want to do it. It's fun. It's a challenge. You can't knock such people for being adventurous.

But it's not in the interests of camera makers, who would have to support it, who have licencing contracts with people who supply components of the software, who dont want you to screw up the camera with bad software and then return it for repairs.

If you're gonna do this stuff you should expect to be on your own.

Re:Camera hardware

[ErikZ]

What infrared digicam did you guys finally decide on?

I've been thinking about getting a digicam also for infrared pictures, some require you to take out the IR filter manually though.

Re:Camera hardware

[BinLadenMyHero]

So, simply include in the EULA that the warranty is void if there is a firmware upgrade. That way they can satisfy that special costumers without damage to their business.

There's no point in keeping the firmware closed. The differential from product to product is a hardware issue.

Re:Camera hardware

[mikeboone]

He didn't even have to come to the USA...nobody's heard from him since last summer. :(

Re:Camera hardware

[KI0PX]

We didn't. There are too many to choose from, and to little info out there about each camera's infrared capabilities.

We will probably end up getting a low-end digital SLR (something in the $800-1000 range), preferably made by Nikon.

Re:Camera hardware

[geminidomino]

What incentive do they have to OPEN it? Why should they? What's in it for them? At best, it's utterly worthless. Worse, it opens up issues like the Rebel hack, enabling features not paid for and selling that many less upgrades.

That's the point. They have no reason to open the firmware.

Re:Camera hardware

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Removing the IR filter (technicaly, they're an IR blocking filter) will make a big improvment on any digicam--more of a difference than the performace between different models.

Of course, removing the IR filter will void the warrenty and it's hard to tell how easy (or should I say hard) it is for each model. Not for the faint of heart.

So yeah. If you don't mind risking the camera, I'd remove the IR filter (google for details, obviously). Otherwise google around for which ones take the best out of the box. I think Nikon's are usually quite good.

I removed the IR filter on my Fiji 6900 and can now take handheld shots on a nice, sunny day. No more tripods (See the IR section of my gallery below).

Re:Camera hardware

[BinLadenMyHero]

What you paid for is (should be) the hardware.
An open firmware would be an incentive for the costumers to buy the product, and that's an incentive for them.
Ok, only geeks would be interested a priori, but when the new version of the firmware is stable and full of interesting features, many more eyes will pop.
The sooner (and better) they open it, the sooner the public version will became a reality.

Some possible features:

ability to set the delay of timer

to program the camera to shot at a fixed interval, to make stop motion movie of a flower growing

include then a motion detector to shot only when the subject changes

a mode to shot many times with different settings (in cases you can't shot again many times; one of them must be right..)

select some images to recompress (or resize) to save space

to be controled by the USB

PDA-like stuff (read text, play games, whatever..)

Re:Camera hardware

[geminidomino]

No, what you pay for is the camera, firmware and all. You pay for what the company selling the camera wants to give you. If it doesnt give consumers the features they want, they don't buy it. Given the market at the moment, no one but a subset of geeks gives a sisil's ass about open firmware.

For every one of those features added by the firmware hacks, that's one less reason for a customer to buy the newest whiz-bang upgraded version.

Your hypothetical situation above is a very nice ideal, but disconnected from reality. Digital Cameras are NOT "geek toys" and aren't marketed as such. They are "consumer devices" and as such, there is no gain for the companies to open up a thing.

Re:Camera hardware

[BinLadenMyHero]

If it doesnt give consumers the features they want, they don't buy it.

Exactly. An open (an thus better) firmware will give them better features.

For every one of those features added by the firmware hacks, that's one less reason for a customer to buy the newest whiz-bang upgraded version.

Most (almost all) of the newest whiz-bang upgraded versions have upgraded hardware.

Re:Camera hardware

[geminidomino]

Exactly. An open (an thus better) firmware will give them better features.

At zero profit to the company.

Re:Camera hardware

[BinLadenMyHero]

better features == more sales

DUH!

Re:Camera hardware

[geminidomino]

Half-assed hacked up firmware == poor consumer opinion. DUH.

Re:Camera hardware

[boots@work]

Digital cameras are like Macs - they 'just work'

Right -- and bear in mind that Apple's recent resurgence is in part due to them adopting an open base and (somewhat) encouraging the open source community.

Apple also indicates the kind of limits we might see on cameras: some stuff you can touch, but there's still a lot of proprietary magic.

The main answer:

[verbatim_verbose]

They already are so much more than their digital counterparts. And personally, even though I am a super-techno-gearhead-whatever, I don't really care to mess with the internals of my digital camera as long as I can get the pictures off of it.

Re:The main answer:

[verbatim_verbose]

Er, film-based counterparts, I meant.

Re:The main answer:

[Karamchand]

But by being digital they have a much greater potential. For example including a GPS with the camera so that the position where each photo is made is recorded in the EXIF header of the images. Or wireless and automatic transfer of pictures made as soon as I put the camera near my computer. I think the possibilities here would be (nearly) endless! Or just simple automated shooting of pictures with specific intervals. Scriptable, like the Kodaks already mentioned.
Of course, both of the features I have mentioned are available for pro photographers who are able to shed out some thousand dollars for their equipment. But I think from the hardware perspective this should even be able for nowaday's consumer cameras.

Apart from all these possibilities I see I also have to wonder about politics. Everywhere geeks are complaining about closed standards, closed software but they don't mind using absolutely closed cameras? That seems strange to me.

Re:The main answer:

[Barrowwright]

Well, some of them use commercial RTOS ( PSOS, vxWorks etc.) and I guess some use propriatory OS, and quite a few probably use linux. So yes, inheritantly hackable, as there must be linux ports for any likely CPU. Whether there is an easy way to re-program them is a different matter. Although they must have some way to do it in the factory... :-) I'd like a schematic and a memory map! ;-)

Re:The main answer:

[Unkle]

While the features mentioned are technically possible, these companies are very much constrained by cost, and want to maximize their profit while giving the user what they want. Wireless transfer is probably the one that would make it into cameras first, as I can see this being desired. While the GPS would be nice, I can't see it being a selling point for most people.

Re:The main answer:

[Reducer2001]

GPS in the file? Great! Then I can find out where all the 'amateur models' I look at live!

A bigger problem ...

[slagdogg]

Ummm, good luck with that. I'm still trying to figure out how to get pictures off of my cell phone without paying @#$%ing Verizon $0.25 every time. Weak.

Re:A bigger problem ...

[nekoniku]

It's possible to buy an inexpensive data cable for a lot of Verizon camera phones; with such a cable, you can copy pics, ring tones, etc. to and from your computer using BitPim. I've got an LG VX6100 and that setup works like a charm.

More info at the Howard cellphone forums.

Re:A bigger problem ...

[Barrowwright]

Get a blue tooth phone, and a bluetooth/USB dongle. Works great, and you can upload ringtones etc as well.

Re:A bigger problem ...

[Rude Turnip]

Unfortunately, Verizon neuters the Bluetooth capabilities of their phones to force you into using their for-pay services to send pictures and get programs/ringtones, etc.

Many Reasons

[gbulmash]

Why are digital camera manufacturers keeping the lid on the capabilities of their products, when digital cameras could be so much more than their film-based counterparts?

Two words: "Unintended uses"

The camera manufacturers want to control how their cameras are used, within the realm of what control they can have. Imagine camera hackers adding functionality with the new software, creating software that uses the hardware more efficiently, adding new compression formats... People wouldn't upgrade nearly as soon as they otherwise would.

There are probably some bad examples too: a virus that detects when a camera is connected, updates the firmware, and then without a complete reflash of the ROMs, every time you turn on your camera it starts zooming in and out and you can't stop it. Who wants the bad publicity of being the first camera to be virus infected?

Last, and probably most importantly, the trouble of publishing the specs and documenting the hardware so that programmers could actually really dig into the system... well, it's an expensive proposition. Convince them that enough people who wouldn't have bought the camera would change their minds if there was a programming interface - make it make financial sense - and they might do it.

- Greg

Re:Many Reasons

[gbulmash]

I understand that completely but I wonder why this practice is so much accepted, even by the "geek community", which often demands openness everywhere else.

Probably because there aren't enough geeks willing to forego the gadget as a protest. If it's a choice of having a closed system digicam or no digicam at all, they'll take the digicam.

Honestly, it's like asking why addicts will buy heroin from a pusher whose dope doesn't meet FDA labeling requirements? Geeks don't want gadgets, they neeeeed them.

- Greg

Re:Many Reasons

[Lumpy]

Who wants the bad publicity of being the first camera to be virus infected?

the local sales moron at my "Norman photo" is always telling people that buy the Canon D10 or D20 that they need to get a card reader and NEVER connect the camera to the PC.

"because it will get a virus and then we have to charge you $120.00 to get the camera fixed by removing that virus."

Sales people blow my mind, there are reasons to buy a CF card reader, but making things up so you can boldly lie to your customers is not one of them.

and yes, the guy tried to defend his position when I mentioned to his boss that he was wrong, and the embedded processor engineer friend I was with could explain it. the sales guy had the balls to say that he has more inside information about such things, my friend told the shop's manager.. "Wow! I guess he is worth more than the $65,000.00 a year they pay me at Smith's aerospace!"

So CANON currently is getting the rap of being EASILY infected with viruses by sales people that must be industry geniuses!

Re:Many Reasons

[LWATCDR]

You left out one. Support.
The less that people can futz with something the cheaper support.
If your Grandfather downloads Billy Bobs super zoomie digicam upgrade and your camera stops working guess who Granddad will call? If the company does not fix it then it is the company's fault for being evil.
Yes it is true. I have a customer that asked one of the techs here two questions.
1. "Why does my software do the wrong thing when I tell it to do the wrong thing?"
2. "Why should I take my computer to someone to fix it?" She was getting a Fat32 error on boot.

Re:Many Reasons

[Grishnakh]

Um, sorry, but outside of Silicon Valley, starting salary for engineers is between $50 and $60k.

Other option

[CypherXero]

Instead of trying to fuck up your camera, why not just give it to me? I'm sure I could use it. :)

Re:Other option

[Maskirovka]

Instead of trying to fuck up your camera, why not just give it to me? I'm sure I could use it. :)

Is that you, Troll?

Re:Other option

[ryanvm]

Ha - priceless. Best Slashdot comment in weeks.

Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[supersuckers]

Answer: no. Where's my open source cell phone, playstation 2, ipod, microwave oven, roomba, etc? Most people are only concerned that the product they use functions as it was intended.

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[M51DPS]

Well you know, there are Linux based cell phones, and people have gotten Linux on the Playstation 2 as well as iPod, plus I hear there is a NetBSD port for toasters....

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[FlipmodePlaya]

Well, you're open source iPod is here (and kind of here, eh?). The PS2 got a Linux kit, and many handheld devices (such as cell phones) use embedded Linux. There is a LOT of effort being put into using open source software on such devices, I could see if being put to cameras.

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[N0decam]

More important than functioning as it was intended is functioning as it's expected.

My digital camera lets me take pictures, and lets me do whatever I want with my pictures. That's why you don't see people getting up in arms about the lack of openness of digital cameras, but you do see active communities built up around "hacking" cell phones to remove artificial restrictions.

Sure it's possible that some hardware hacking could result in some new whiz bang feature in my camera, but honestly, I (and I assume many others) don't use 99% of the whiz bang features that are already enabled on my camera, so why do I need more?

On the other hand, I'd never buy a cameraphone that didn't let me download my pictures to my computer and use them myself without paying a fee to the service provider. That's just insane, and wrong.

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[ishark]

Actually, even the people who care about "freedom" care more about interoperability than closed systems. As long as the images are exported in an open format, readable by anything, I don't care at all if the camera is completely closed, since this does not limit my ability to do what I want in any way.

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[DrSkwid]

this does not limit my ability to do what I want in any way.

sounds like you're imagiantion is doing that for you

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[Luminary Crush]

I do. I like my Canon quite a bit, but there are some functions that are software controlled that annoy me by not allowing the flexibility I need to take some really great shots - particularly in low light situations.

For example, I'd like to be able to turn off the flash and keep the shutter speed up fast - but the camera forces the shutter open longer (despite changing the ASA speed setting). The result is that I can't get good pics of, say, the moon through a telescope (yes I built a Canon digital camera holder for the telescope with stuff from Home Depot) because the photos are overexposed from the light. If I "trick" the camera by turning the flash on and just holding my finger over it (or, put duct tape over it) I can get some usable shots.

Anyway, that's one reason. I'm sure if I thought about it I could find alot more things I'd like to do with the shutter speeds/exposure time/etc.

BTW, I did manage to get some cool pictures of Mars last year using the old 'tape over the flash' method to bump down the shutter speed...clearly visible were the ice caps and some of the dark regions...

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[PuppiesOnAcid]

Many people want their PC to just "function as intended"...like checking email, browsing the internets, etc, but there is a huge open-source initiative for PCs. Where do you draw the line with electronic gizmos?

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[Etyenne]

Most people are only concerned that the product they use functions as it was intended.

Keyword here being "most". I am not "most" people, I am a hacker and a thinkerer. The rest of the world can be happy with black box that "just work", and that is fine by me. But the mere knowledge that I hold in my hand a microprocessor-based device that I can't reprogram nag me in some very annoying way. YMMV. Mere mortal can't understand.

We can see that the hacker spirit have definitely left this board when most answers to such a question is "Why would you want to do that anyway ?".

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[N0decam]

That's my point though - you're probably one of a handful of people in the whole world that it matters to. If you couldn't buy a digital camera that took JPG or TIFF or some other common format, there would be millions of people clamouring for an "open" camera.

Or, they wouldn't have sold as many of them as they have.

Re:Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[cnj]

Where indeed:

cell phone: Motorola and DoCoMo both feature Linux based phones (I'm not sure where to get the source, but I don't have one of the phones so I'm not legally entitled to it. Anyone who buys one though is ... does anyone have one of these and tried getting the source?)

Sony's Playstation 2: http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/playstation2/

Apple's iPod: http://ipodlinux.sourceforge.net/index.shtml

Why??

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it you want access to change? The camera really has 2 or 3 base functions that can only be improved within the confines of the hardware. Why does everything have to be open? Just because it's there and you like to hack?
I'm not flaming/trolling, I just don't see the point of your question...

Re:Why??

[Mr2cents]

Some ideas:

Manually control shutter speed, zoom, all kind of settings, instead of those "easy to use" scenery settings in modern camera's (read: we know you are a moron, just let us decide for you what's the best setting).

Because you want to reprogram it to take a snapshot whenever the image changes suddenly.

Because you want to save images as PNG.

Or simply because hackers enjoy hacking stuff?

Why are philips webcams so popular as cheap CCD imagers with astronomers? Because a) the ccd chip is of high quality, and b) there are mods for long exposure, reading raw frames, ...

Re:Why??

[MikeMartin]

Why not ask a question like this? Asking a question like this may raise ideas that most of have not considered. Isn't curiosity a good thing? Don't you want to hear from people who have come up with novel ideas? That's one of the reasons I read slashdot.

Re:Why??

[orasio]

Speak for yourself!!
"Just because it's there and you like to hack" is more than enough reason to open your new digital camera, or any other gadget, digital or not.
I like to do that sort of thing, even if I don't accopmlish anything, it would give me some sense of fulfilment to know which color the pcb on my digicam was, if I had one. I have opened most pieces of electronics I own, but I never thought that
I needed a reason to do so.
Of course, with digital cameras, theres a lot to do, for example, what's with the sony cams not being able to be used as webcams, or surveillance cameras, for example?
You could automate the camera to get better automatic pictures, different exposure ranges, extended exposure pics, playing music with the beeper, installing java, java games, adding bluetooth through some odd hook, multiplayer java games, using the camera as a PDA. Maybe you get the idea.

Re:Why??

[radish]

Manually control shutter speed, zoom, all kind of settings, instead of those "easy to use" scenery settings in modern camera's (read: we know you are a moron, just let us decide for you what's the best setting).

Any decent camera already has manual controls. Hell, even most crappy ones do.

Because you want to reprogram it to take a snapshot whenever the image changes suddenly
Interesting, but would require way more general processing power than any camera has. Get a webcam designed for the job.

Because you want to save images as PNG.
Again, interesting. But with JPG for lossy and TIFF or even RAW for lossless, why?

Or simply because hackers enjoy hacking stuff?

Now that's a good reason. But surely these people enjoy a challenge...so making it easy would spoil the fun ;)

Re:Why??

[Mr2cents]

"Any decent camera already has manual controls. Hell, even most crappy ones do."

My nikon coolpix doesn't, it just has general settings like "night", "sport", ... exposure time is mentioned nowhere.

"Interesting, but would require way more general processing power than any camera has. Get a webcam designed for the job."

Who sais? Maybe these camera's have better CPU's than you imagine. And you could use some tricks, like taking the images at low image quality until you find change (it's as easy as substracting them), then take an image at high quality and store it. No bulky computer needed, only a camera you can put somewhere remote (would be great for animal observation, if you watch nat.geo. you could have seen an expedition that does something similar).

Re:Why??

[Andy Dodd]

In addition, I would not be surprised if JPEG and TIFF compression were done in dedicated hardware, and PNG would be impossible to add to most digital cameras without massive sacrifices in performance.

Re:Why??

[elem]

Maybe these camera's have better CPU's than you imagine.

No they don't - they have very specialized CPUs that are designed to only pull raw data out of the image sensor and to process it into one of a limited number of formats. You're not talking about a general purpose CPU here.

In any case, Digital SLRs (which is what you'll find your high quality pictures taken with...) work in a different way to a camera like your CoolPix. An SLR isn't continuously reading data from the image sensor because the sensor is protected by both a shutter and a mirror except during the brief periods of time where a picture is actually being taken.

Re:Why??

[alexo]

Actually, the submitter has a point.

Let me tell you a story.

Consider Panasonic. They have a worderful family of digital cameras -- the FZ series -- featuring a Leica lens with 12X optically stabilized zoom and other nifty features.

The first camera in the series, the Lumix DMC-FZ1, was quickly followed by another model that added several important features (like Aperture and Shutter priority modes and white balance adjustment).

When people on online forums speculated that the difference between the cameras were only in the firmware, a Panasonic USA representative insisted that there were "significant" hardware differences between them.

But then, lo and behold, Panasonic Japan released a firmware upgrade that, for the equivalent of US$50 in Yen, converted the FZ1 into a full-featured FZ2. Only problem, it was not released outside of Japan (probably because other regional divisions of Panasonic preferred to milk the customer for eight times the amount).

Well, you can guess how it ended. Most people got tired of Panasonic's lack of responsiveness, told them to get stuffed and downloaded a copy of the firmware from the internet, warranty be damned.

(If you are interested to learn more about the FZ1 and the FZ2, I maintain a FAQ on these cameras).

Consider these points:

* Some camera manufacturers do not release firmware patches (to the point of calling obvious bugs "features").

* The camera often has hidden features (like a cell-phone's service menus).

* The camera's hardware often has more capabilities than the firmware exposes. Often this is done by purpose (price differentiation) but other times the company just does not think that a feature is useful.

Would I "mod" my camera if I could? You bet! (helloooooooo manual focus...)
Unfortunately, everything about it is proprietary and, contrary to the Canon 300D, there are no hacks for it.

Re:Why??

[Grishnakh]

"Any decent camera already has manual controls. Hell, even most crappy ones do."

My nikon coolpix doesn't, it just has general settings like "night", "sport", ... exposure time is mentioned nowhere.

If you wanted a camera with manual controls, why did you buy a cheap consumer camera without them? This is really basic: make a list of requirements before you buy something, then only look at products that meet those requirements.

Re:Why??

[Grishnakh]

Support for people hacking their cameras, phones, or MP3-players is a costly proposition, and there is really a very very small market for it.

I disagree. Hacking cameras and MP3 players is pretty much useless, but phones are different. Most phones now are small computers, with a fair amount of processing power. They're also something you carry with you everywhere. If nothing else, this makes them a great platform on which to run your own custom applications. Since so many phones can play Java games, the performance isn't a problem. But since the phones are closed (usually), people can't put custom software on them as they should be able to.

Cameras and MP3 players aren't like this: they're usually very specifically designed for their intended purpose, so even if you could hack them, there's a serious limit to what you could do.

Re:Why??

[Mr2cents]

"If you wanted a camera with manual controls, why did you buy a cheap consumer camera without them?"

Simple, I didn't buy it, it was a gift.

Or to put it in Monty Python terms:
- C'est un cadeau!
- Quoi?
- A present!
- Ah, un cadeau! ;)

It does allow for firmware upgrades, though, so maybe, just maybe, a future version will have this feature.

Re:Why??

[Hognoxious]

In any case, you might want to automagically tell it to take a picture and then upload it to a real 'puter for analysis.

Sorry if this sounds like a troll, but

[Lord Kano]

I don't care how my digicam does it, as long as the files are available to me in a format that I can use.

My visioneer camera gives me .jpgs and .avis that I can get via a USB cable. It makes no difference to me how they end up on the flash memory device.

LK

Linux on Digital Cameras

[Esine]

So you want to have Linux on iPod and everything else but not on digital camera? That would be cool.

Easy ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still trying to figure out how to get pictures off of my cell phone without paying @#$%ing Verizon $0.25 every time

easy, just use your digital camera to take a snappy of your phone's screen, voila!

Happy..

[ackthpt]

I'm just happy my Nikon Coolpix 800 takes AA batteries. I keep a few sets of NiMH cells around and charged for a quick exchange if I need them and can always zip into a Quickie Mart for some Duracells if I'm in a pinch.

I'm a hard sell on those Li-Ion specialized batteries. They usually require chargin in the camera, right?

Re:Happy..

[Vengeance]

My Nikon Coolpix 995 uses specialized batteries, but they certainly don't require in-camera charging. A full charge lasts for literally hundreds of images (in 'fine' mode, about 1Megapixel JPGs). I bought one extra battery and I find the combination more than sufficient for my needs.

Re:Happy..

[hawk]

I'm a hard sell on those Li-Ion specialized batteries. They usually require chargin in the camera, right?

Yep, and they're awefully expensive with less capacity than the NiMH AA cells.

I would have bought the Kodak a couple of months before my Minolta had it used AA. The Minolta not only uses them, but they warn you that you *should* use NiMH as alkalines and nicad don't pack enough juice.

hawk

Re:Happy..

[jridley]

Not necessarily. You can get external chargers 3rd party if you have to.

I like the LiIon because they last so long. In a digital SLR, a hell of a long time. I've taken over 500 shots on a battery, and it still wasn't dead, I was just done for the day. A friend ran his dead on a pro shoot, he had to change batteries around exposure 700.

If you shoot more than 700 exposures per day and don't want to carry a separate battery, then I guess having AA's instead of LiIons is good.

Re:Happy..

[Matt_R]

My Kodak DX4530 takes 2 AA's. I dont bother with the NiMH - I use CRV-3 Lithiums for $8 each, they last several hundred shots and dont go flat on the shelf.

Re:Happy..

[Skater]

My D70 has a Lithium Ion battery pack but included an external charger - in fact, I don't think there is another way to charge it. It also included a carrier that I can put 3 CR-2 Lithium batteries in.

Re:Happy..

[dabraun]

Alkaline batteries provice significantly more power for a given size vs. any type of rechargable battery.

Li-Ion and Li-Polymer batteries are the most dense rechargable battery on the market. They are also unaffected by partial charging/recharging (though their detection circuitry that reports the % remaining can get confused if you never fully charge the battery.) Li based cells are never fully discharged (electronics prevent this - if they do in fact get fully discharged they can not be recharged with anything a consumer would have access to.)

On the downside they have a lifespan of about three years before their growing internal resistance makes them all but useless - and this is pretty much unaffected by your usage of the battery.

On the issue of 'in-camera charging' - I have had a Canon S100 and S230 - both used the same basic battery (NB-1L / NB-1LH) and the battery charger was a seperate device (i.e. not charged inside the camera.) Extra batteries are easy to find on the net.

I also have a Canon ZR-20 (camcorder) and a Canon 20D DSLR - their batteries are also compatible with each other (though they are different.) The Rebel / 300D battery is also compatible with these (though it is also a bit different than either the ZR20's or 20Ds.) The camcorder came with a charger wire to charge tbe battery inside the camera. The 20D came with a seperate charger that works for both batteries.

Re:Happy..

[Ford Prefect]

Alkaline batteries provice significantly more power for a given size vs. any type of rechargable battery.

Which is why if you put alkaline AAs in a digital camera, they might last ten shots before being completely exhausted... Why is this? I've never heard a satisfactory explanation. ;-)

As for charge-in-camera Li-Ion batteries, my increasingly elderly Fuji Finepix has one (descendants of the camera all use AAs, apparently), and it's been absolutely fine. I still get 120+ shots from a single charge (and I use the preview-before-save thing a lot, so actual shots taken is probably 200+), and the camera's heading towards three years old.

Still, I think I'll buy a new battery for it, before they become completely unavailable!

Re:Happy..

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Alkaline batteries provice significantly more power for a given size vs. any type of rechargable battery.

I call BS to that. NiCads still provide the most power. NiMH are close (and may infact be better now). Of course, for consumer electronics, NiMH and Li-x are better suited than NiCads.

Re:Happy..

[hawk]

I had a DX4320. Well, I suppose I still had it.

We were in canoes in Missouri, and it was travelling in a ziplock bag. As I was taking a picture, my wife started screaming--our oldest was pulling one of the twins out of an eddy (which was pulling back) after they'd capsized. I just shoved it in my pocket and headed strait for them.

Getting ashore, things went nuts again as their oars and cushions headed downriver. I hurried back to the canoe, and ended up waste deep.

*sigh*

We even set it out in the desert air to dry, but it's never come back

And then about two weeks later, my daughter ran the little radio shack flatphoto through the washer in her pants. Surprisingly, they replaced it, without even asking what I meant by "unfortunate incident."

hawk

Re:Happy..

[hawk]

Alkaline batteries provice significantly more power for a given size vs. any type of rechargable battery.

perhaps under certain drainage patterns. They're not even close to NiMH in many applications, including (at least some) digital cameras.

My 2000 and 2300 mAH NiMH cells provide more than twice the life of alkalines in my Minolta Dimage 2. The instruction manual actually warns not to bother with Alkalines or NiCads due to shorter life. My father didn't read that, and discovered that it ate them--rapidly.

hawk

One reason for open cameras

[mveloso]

The only reason I can think of for having an open-source camera OS is so someone could port MAME to it.

Seriously, the newer cameras have decent screens and long battery lives. They have four-way controllers. Why not drop donkey kong, pac-man, or galaga on them and have something that would effectively be a mutant gameboy advance?

This would make a Nice Project for someone with Too Much Free Time.

Re:One reason for open cameras

[drfishy]

They already did...

http://digita.mame.net/

Why?

[ucblockhead]

Because the vast majority of people just want to take pictures, and the last thing camera companies want to do is spend lots of time documenting stuff and answering support questions from the ten or so people who might want to do this.

Re:Why?

[cetan]

Plus, with new models comeing out every 8-9 months, they don't want you hanging onto them and hacking around. They want you to buy bigger, better, faster, and more!

Re:Why?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Back in the day people that care would reverse engineer.

Now that reverse engineering is de facto illegal in many cases (DMCA, EULAs, et al), those that care need the device to have open specifications.

If it is illegal to liberate the interfaces yourself, you will have to find one that is already open.

Re:Why?

[ucblockhead]

Yeah. Right. People used to reverse engineer their cameras before the DMCA.

Re:Why?

[hivolt]

And what is the first thing camera companies want to do? My fear is the answer lies hidden in the ratio of reply to email in this response I received:

Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 11:00 AM
From: support@largan.com
Subject: RE: Chameleon Mega driver interface

THe only files we have are at our website.

Huge Sale!
Largan Digital is trying to make room for NEW cameras and need your help!
All Largan Chameleon digital cameras are on sale for $59.99!
These cameras are not trade in's but direct from the manufacturer.
For information go to http://www.largan.com/sale.htm!

To see the latest Largan news, product updates and product specials,
visit http://www.largan.com/newsletter.htm.

Thank you for your interest in Largan.
Will Pierce
Administrator
Largan Tech Support
2432 West Peoria Ave Suite 1166
Phoenix, AZ 85029
1-877-474-9357 (Toll Free)
8am - 5pm Mountain Standard Time

Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 8:29 PM
To: support@largan.com
Subject: Chameleon Mega driver interface

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am interested in writing a USB Linux driver for my chameleon Mega 1.3 megapixel camera. How would may I obtain technical information for the USB interface? I would like to replicate the functionality of sp503app.exe under Linux. Thanks!

More likely support costs

[MushMouth]

Seriously, if manufactures let people hack/rewrite their firmware, how much does that increase their support overhead? (don't give me "users are on their own, it still costs $$)

Re:More likely support costs

[arivanov]

From the perspective of a vendor making a small embedded device whose success is dependant on time-to-market open source is quite often a very expensive proposition. 95% of the stuff on the market is in fact broken hardware fixed by a quick and ugly fixes in software. It was done this way because the budget and the delivery schedules did not allow fixing the hardware properly. Do you thing that the vendors would like to have the breakage documented, well known and available to the average luser doing a google for it? Of course not.

Re:More likely support costs

[gbulmash]

Seriously, if manufactures let people hack/rewrite their firmware, how much does that increase their support overhead? (don't give me "users are on their own, it still costs $$)

Have to agree. As someone who does support as part of my job, there's still a cost for the customer contact, even if you say "we're sorry, but we can't do anything for you." It may take 5 minutes of trying to patiently question someone who is irrationally frustrated or just flustered, merely to to establish the particulars of the situation so you can judge whether or not they're having a supported issue.

Then there may be more time of them trying to argue with you, trying to contact your supervisor to appeal your decision, trying to submit a helpdesk contact again in the hope that this one will land on the desk of someone more sympathetic.

All that labor time costs money.

- Greg

Re:Umm no

[Detritus]

I've updated the firmware on my camera several times, to fix bugs and improve performance.

Re:Umm no

[Big_Al_B]

Well, I had a Canon G2 that required a firmware upgrade to solve a "blue screen of death" type of problem.

I would imagine...

[harrkev]

I would imagine because nobody cares...

If you are starting from scratch, there is a lot to screw up. First of all, you need to get the metering right, which is far from trivial. You also need to be able to auto-focus, which is also far from trivial. And this is AFTER you figure out the interface to the CCD, LCD, and buttons. Plus, you have to know how to control the zoom motor, auto-focus motor, and flash.

If you DID re-invent the wheel (and did a good job of it), what do you gain at the end? Sure, you might be able to improve metering a little. You might be able to improve the user interface. But if a camera has a raw file format, you are already getting all of the quality that the hardware can deliver. And JPEG already has pretty good compression, so it is hard to improve on that.

I saved the best part for last. You go through all of this work on a 5MP camera, which is discontinued after one year and replaced by a 7MP model with a different architecture. So, you decide to upgrade, and throw all of your work in the trash.

If you want to, feel free. But include me out.

Re:I would imagine...

[aramps]

Probably the most insightful (to this point) response why NOT to. Of course, little things like cracks for custom start up logos or passwords for would be easier... also: nice sig.

Re:I would imagine...

[Obfuscant]

If you are starting from scratch, there is a lot to screw up.

Yep. And when you screw it up, you're likely to blame the camera manufacturer for making "bad hardware" or not describing the hardware well enough, and when people see the poor pictures YOU are getting from that camera, they are unlikely to buy one for themselves. The camera company loses sales due to bad word of mouth.

If they thought that the chances were really good that someone would come out with hot new freeware, they'd be quite happy to sell more cameras to people who install the new software. The only thing they'd not be happy about is bad software causing people to blame them for the problem, and tieing up their support hotlines. And they see the chances of the latter being much greater than the chances of the former.

Re:I would imagine...

[frohike]

First of all, you need to get the metering right, which is far from trivial. You also need to be able to auto-focus, which is also far from trivial.

I think that's actually a great reason to have hacked firmware on your camera. As someone who spent a lot of childhood time playing with a real SLR camera, it drives me absolutely nutty when I can't just tell the stupid thing to focus or use the light settings that I want. I find myself trying to trick the camera into doing what I want it to do, and then the screen is too small to see if what I did had the effect I actually wanted.

And of course the camera manufacturers want to charge you a lot of extra $$$ for those capabilities, so that explains the motive...

Re:I would imagine...

[Grrreat]

Love the sig Kevin. Is that Commodore Basic or Apple Basic, its kinda hard to tell with two lines. He He!

Re:I would imagine...

[angle_slam]

The Canon G series of digicams (now up to the G6) have a manual exposure mode. They also have a manual focus mode, but it is all but useless in the G2 that I have.

Of course, all modern DSLRs have the capability to both manual focus and manual meter.

Re:I would imagine...

[Obfuscant]

So, Microsoft shouldn't let people write Windows programs,

Hello, anonymous coward.

Yes, let's ignore the fact that Windows is an OPERATING SYSTEM, which, by definition, is used to support all kinds of user programs, and a digital camera is A DIGITAL CAMERA, which is intended to TAKE PICTURES and not be a general purpose computing platform.

If only a very few people are interested in trying this, noone will see the failed pictures that result from it...

I guess we've forgotten about this thing called the World Wide Web, where even one person who puts up a page pronouncing camera X a rotten piece of crap because the "hardware sucks" can reach an audience of millions of people. Nobody will see bad pictures unless they get posted to the web where EVERYONE can see them.

Plus, being an open platform is probably a selling point for more people than you think. There's a small but significant market that buys a product solely because of its hackability.

Which is it, a small market or "more people than you think"? And does this small number outnumber those who wouldn't buy it because they hear it is "bad hardware", even if the reason it is "bad hardware" is because it is difficult to hack properly?

I know what OS your camera runs...

[geneing]

I don't know the processor, but I know that canon digital cameras run a version of DOS (DR-DOS?). I am not joking. You can get command prompt by connecting through USB.

If you are interested you should look here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canondigicamhacking/

Personally, I try to concentrate on the artistic aspect of photography rather than the technical one. It's much more fun.

phone cameras

[raygundan]

What phone are you using? I went through a couple of them, and had good luck with third-party cables and software. I had an LG-VX6000 before i moved to Sprint, if i remember right. A $25 cable and the freeware bitpim software allowed me to pull the pics off without paying verizon. I believe it supports quite a few brands and types of phones.

Re:phone cameras

[slagdogg]

I have a Samsung a610, seen here:

http://www.wirelessmoment.com/samsung_scha610_from _verizon.jpg

Re:phone cameras

[Lothsahn]

My Treo 650 allows me to directly save the pictures to a SD card... You can then move them with any SD reader.

Alternatively, you can retrieve them at a hotsync, or email them to yourself via the built-in email client.

Re:phone cameras

[maynard]

and the freeware bitpim software

WOW!!! That is an amazingly useful link for me. I have one of those phones and the cable, but don't own a "supported" Windows PC. Because of you, now I know where to get software to use it. Thanks a bunch! --M

Re:phone cameras

[EXrider]

I also have a VX-6000 and the radio shack cable.

That damn cable was the best purchase ever, BitPim rocks, it's written in Python and runs on Winblows, Mac, and Linux. I use it to grab all my pics, and my contacts, and backup everything else. That cable is useful for much more than taking pictures off the phone.

Also, few people know, but you can play MP3 ringtones on the VX-6000, it's very picky about the format of them though, it's been a while since I've done it, I think they have to be 65 Kbit/sec, mono, less than 60 seconds length, 22000 KHz, with a .mid extension instead of .mp3. I used http://audacity.sf.net/ to encode them because they didn't work from iTune's encoder.

Also, the USB cable can be used with the phone as a 90K internet connection in a pinch, and yes it works on Mac and Linux too. It comes out of your airtime so you get free internet access on nights and weekends.

Re:phone cameras

[x40sw0n]

there is a group on yahoo for the vx4400 as well (bitpim was originally written for this phone); I have found a great deal of useful information there as well, and it seems to work on pretty much all of the Verizon phones (my wife uses a VX4500, and it works really well there too, except the calender is buggy; that is due to it's speakerphone thing though). The group has either a faq or a link to a faq about proper formats for the mp3 ringtones too, as I made a couple for my wife's phone (the 4400 doesn't support them).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vx4400support/

Re:phone cameras

[cetan]

Which costs 25 cents per email.

Re:phone cameras

[Emrikol]

the 4400 does support mp3 ringtones. mail me at emrikol at gmail if you want to know. I'm too lazy to type it out here.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides the question of why you'd want to do that, I doubt there would be THAT many features you could eek out of the hardware that the firmware doesn't already support. I'll be the no.1 reason is because they don't want a bunch of wanna-be 'hackers' toasting their cameras and sending them in for repair saying, 'gee, I don't know what happened, but it's not working anymore, please send me a brand new one.'

Ever wonder why the firmware for your microwave isn't open? Wow, imagine the possibilities!?!? Their just is too much risk for the payoff of releasing all that data and being 'open'. Besides, ever think that there might be some IP in that firmware?

it's called recovery of development costs

[swschrad]

canon created their own chip, and sony may have as well... shoot, probably into fourth generation of them by now. point is, it's a one-trick pony and a good place to put an embedded real-time system. so are medical devices; why they are using generic OS in medical devices like NT custom and linux is way, way beyond understanding.

if you have one or two defined tasks for a system, and you can make an ASIC FSM and not be bothered any more by updates, obsolescence, hacks, and fumblefscks, why the hell not? you get into update and obsolescence issues if you want to hire generically trained folks off the streets for five weeks to build your products, and use off-the-shelf packages that every script kiddie has.

for example, all physical interface stuff in carrier data switches and the routers that connect to them are locked down tight in custom or semi-custom ASICs. it's a perfect place for a FSM, and when you get it right, the product is done for 25 years. line up the bits, shift them out when they're bytes, and shovel the stuff fast, fast, fast. no darned reason to get a sound card driver or mouse support tied up with that.

same thing with porting pixels. all you have to do is get it right once, and you're done.

Re:it's called recovery of development costs

[jimicus]

point is, it's a one-trick pony and a good place to put an embedded real-time system. so are medical devices; why they are using generic OS in medical devices like NT custom and linux is way, way beyond understanding.

Except with medical equipment it doesn't have to be. It can just be industrial-grade PC kit reading off a number of sensors or controlling a couple of mechanical devices. Much much cheaper to develop than a full embedded system.

Whether or not you want your life support machine running Windows (or Linux, for that matter) is another issue altogether...

Re:it's called recovery of development costs

[swschrad]

I frankly don't want a consumer OS running my infusion pump or heart monitor... or... the fluoroscope when they're poking me with sewer snakes to ream out my arteries. I want a one-off, real-time, tested system in that FDA-licensed machine.

every time you patch a medical device software package, you have to have the patch and the entire resultant system re-certified by the FDA, in case you didn't know. months wasted, there was a thread on that a few months back. so there's a worse place to be than in IT for some hidebound outfit that expects to buy something once for life, yet expects you to absolutely protect everything all the time without fail. you want unpatched, open, life-safety crap hanging off a network, you can find it in any hospital you want to look at. better get the med-techs too drunk to fight before you ask 'em about it, though.

Sometimes, it's just stupid

[Accipiter]

Nobody gives a shit about openness with things like digital cameras because if they have certain needs, they buy a camera that fits those needs and it performs as expected. Nobody who researches their purchases thoroughly is going to be unhappy with the performance of their camera, and anyone who DOESN'T research their purchase is not going to want to hack around with the internals trying to "improve" their camera.

I mean honestly, who the fuck cares? Is it really that important to make your camera run NetBSD? Because that's what this is about.

Canon

[squidfrog]

Canon deserves some credit--like I've mentioned before, while not giving low-level access to the guts of the operating system, their SDK is head and shoulders above what I've heard is available for other cameras. And, in theory, it's under active development--some features seem to exist in the SDK's header files that aren't (yet?) fully implemented, which will make it interesting to keep an eye on.

Re:Umm no

[geekguy]

I have actually gotten firmware upgrades for my Digital Camera, clear the SD card, download the file, put it on the card and put the card in the camera, turn on the camera and it flashes whatever chip it uses. Fixed some issues that they found and I think improved performance slightly.

No, no one cares.

[Oz0ne]

Open source is a niche. It doesn't belong in high end specifically tasked hardware.

Why bother?

[Telastyn]

I'm not a big photography nut, and don't personally own a digital camera, but what neato effects can the little ARM do in the camera that cannot be done later on a 3+ghz desktop running photoshop?

Re:Why bother?

[random coward]

Keep the shutter open for longer for night shots?

Re:Why bother?

[jimicus]

Short answer: Not a lot. But (especially in low to medium-end cameras) the little ARM processor has access to the raw, uncompressed image. So a transform which is significantly impacted by JPEG compression doesn't have to be.

Of course, if your cameras compression algorithm leaves artefacts which are likely to be a problem, it's probably beyond help.

Re:Why bother?

[bear_phillips]

There are a ton things you could do. Rember the slashdot story about the guy with the weather balloon. He used a soekris board running linux to fire a digital camera. Most camera have 10 second shutter timer, but do not give you a time lapse option (because 99% of people don't need it). If the hardware were open you could probably add that feature.

Capitalism 101

[fmaxwell]

I still have my Kodak DIGITA-based camera from several years ago and I loved the flexibility, even though the performance is poor by today's standards (long cycle times, poor battery life, etc). Why are digital camera manufacturers keeping the lid on the capabilities of their products, when digital cameras could be so much more than their film-based counterparts?

Because they don't want you keeping their cameras for several years. They want you to upgrade every year or, at most, every two. Most digital cameras are all-in-one affairs -- a one-time purchase. It's not like the days of old when Kodak could sell a 35mm point-and-shoot and count on film sales for years to come. Nor is it like the SLR market, where the camera body is just the initial sale and the consumer will buy multiple lenses, expensive flashes, and filters.

Even in the digital SLR market, the manufacturers still have not introduced replaceable "film" backs that allow consumers to upgrade the CMOS sensors as higher resolution comes out. And that's probably why the digital SLR market is not taking off faster. No one wants to spend over a grand on a digital SLR and then, a year later, find that $300 point-and-shoot cameras have double the resolution. It's not like my Nikon 6006, where I can "upgrade" the camera's performance by purchasing newer, better film.

Re:Capitalism 101

[hawk]

Because they don't want you keeping their cameras for several years. They want you to upgrade every year or, at most, every two. Most digital cameras are all-in-one affairs -- a one-time purchase. It's not like the days of old when Kodak could sell a 35mm point-and-shoot and count on film sales for years to come.

Ahh, but it *is*. You may *take* the pictures without film, but Kodak has a staggering share of the store printing business.

At this point, it isn't clear to me that it costs less to print photos on my own printer instead of Wally-world. I think it's about a dollar a page at home, and .26c for a 4x6 at WW. I suspect that they're using better paper & ink, too, when they use the Kodak machine.

hawk

Re:Capitalism 101

[radish]

Even in the digital SLR market, the manufacturers still have not introduced replaceable "film" backs that allow consumers to upgrade the CMOS sensors as higher resolution comes out. And that's probably why the digital SLR market is not taking off faster. No one wants to spend over a grand on a digital SLR and then, a year later, find that $300 point-and-shoot cameras have double the resolution.

Well frankly, I think you're overstating it a little :) A Canon digital rebel will set you back about $800, and has ~6MP. $300 cameras will _not_ have 12MP in a year, that I am pretty sure of. Even if they did, pixel count is not the only useful measure of a camera's greatness. Once you get to about 6 (for most people) or 10 (for pros) you're good, then it comes down to optics, ease of use, reliability, speed, battery life, metering, AF, choice of lenses etc etc.

Re:Capitalism 101

[fmaxwell]

Well frankly, I think you're overstating it a little :) A Canon digital rebel will set you back about $800, and has ~6MP.

You're talking about the cheapest of the digital SLRs, and that's still $100 under what the big boys like Crutchfield sell it for. $1,000 is a lot less than most of the digital SLRs out there.

$300 cameras will _not_ have 12MP in a year, that I am pretty sure of.

I'm not so sure of that, but even if I'm off by a year, it's still the same problem in principal: You've invested a handsome sum in a digital SLR and it's not comparable to the current generation.

Even if they did, pixel count is not the only useful measure of a camera's greatness. Once you get to about 6 (for most people) or 10 (for pros) you're good, then it comes down to optics, ease of use, reliability, speed, battery life, metering, AF, choice of lenses etc etc.

It depends on what you do with the camera, but noise level for the sensor is a big issue, speed (e.g. ISO 1600, 3200, etc.) matters, color purity matters. Sure, there are lots of measures, but you just don't get better than your sensor and, if you can't replace that, you're talking about a disposable body.

Re:Capitalism 101

[fmaxwell]

Ahh, but it *is*. You may *take* the pictures without film, but Kodak has a staggering share of the store printing business.

True, but how many digital pictures get printed? Maybe 20%? Many people take the picture digitally, put it on their computer, e-mail it to friends, or post it on a web site. Others take a whole bunch of photos and just get a couple of them printed. That's one of the big problems that Kodak and the camera stores are facing: How to convince people that they should turn their digital photos into prints.

Re:Capitalism 101

[fmaxwell]

Same could be said about cell phones, harddrives and Operating systems... They are not expected to be kept for several years, as newer better technologiews both hardware and software come out.

My Sony T610 cell phone with color display and (horrible) digital camera cost me $-175 after rebates (yes, T-Mobile paid me $175 to take it). My 200GB hard drive was $29 after rebates (screw-up where rebates overlapped). My 160GB drive was $49 after rebates. My OS did not represent any big investment either -- and I can always download Linux for *BSD.

I don't mind throwing away a $50 hard drive or being paid to take a new cell phone, but that's a lot different than retiring a camera that cost a grand.

Re:Capitalism 101

[koekepeer]

true but you shoot a zillion pictures once you have a digicam... anyway kodak has to do something to survive. analog film is going the way of the dinosaur.

Re:Capitalism 101

[koekepeer]

http://www.dcviews.com/press/Mamiya-ZD.htm

ok it's a bit expensive, but it is The Good Stuff (TM)

Re:Capitalism 101

[amokk]

I'm sure you've been very well trained to spit this argument out everytime someone mentions it, but it's still clear that you don't know what you are talking about. First of all, the DSLR market is not for everyone. Not everybody needs a digital SLR for the shit that they do. Additionally, some people decide to opt for a regular point and shoot camera when they realize exactly how complicated phototography can get.

However, Digital Camera Backs have been available for years. Granted, these are in the larger format cameras but nevertheless, they are available. Also, high end (even the prosumer models) Canon and Nikon DSLRs derive some of their reputation for their longevity. Some photographers upgrade their gear every year. Others dont.

Also, there is NOT A SINGLE point and shoot camera on the market today better than my old Nikon D1 DSLR (About 3 Megapixels). Resolution is NOT everything in a camera. Any idiot can tell you that. That's why there are some Sony POS cameras that claim ridiculous megapixel numbers that actually SUCK ASS.

Another point where you are dead wrong is that "better film" hasn't been available for years. We're still using Fujichrome Velvia and Reala for most things. Been around for years. "Better film" isn't and won't be a reality anytime soon due to the nature of how film works. And then there is the idiot comment about being able to upgrade the CMOS censors. First, not all censors are CMOS, and second, this is by no means a trivial process. AT ALL. Read up and understand how they work before blowing things out of your ass.

Stick to what you know. Avoid speaking about things you have no clue on. DSLRS are worth it to so many people for so many different reasons. If you can't tell the difference between a DSLR and POS camera, you are not in any way qualified to make comparisons between the two of them.

Re:Capitalism 101

[fmaxwell]

T-Mobile paid you to buy the T610 because it has terrible reception and they want to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

I'm not joking. I work for a dealer...

I've had it for months and it has worked extremely well from New York to Florida. In addition, my friend, his wife, and my girlfriend all have the T610 mobile phone. We have all had multiple mobile phones and all of us are quite satisfied with the T610. Reviews of the T610 do not corroborate your claims and most of them rate the reception as average.

Re:Capitalism 101

[fmaxwell]

true but you shoot a zillion pictures once you have a digicam...

But if the pictures stay in the electronic medium, then it doesn't help Kodak or the local developing labs.

anyway kodak has to do something to survive. analog film is going the way of the dinosaur.

I agree completely. It's going to be several (or more) years before digital is good enough to replace medium format (e.g., what Hasselblad, Bronica, and Rollei shoot). And it may never have the pixel count to replace large format. But in the mass-market up through semi-pro and photojournalism, the handwriting is on the wall: photo-reactive film is going away.

Nope

[KalvinB]

Cameras should work as advertised out of the box without tweaking. If the camera doesn't have the features you want then buy a different camera.

Unless by hacking the camera I can reveal the ability to fine tune the exposure time or the arpeture of a point and shoot camera, I really don't care. And I highly doubt that a "cheap" point and shoot has the mechanics to support fractional to multiple second exposure times. Or the ability to have a greater brightness setting.

So, even if I could hack it, I couldn't do anything useful.

If I really want a professional camera that has such features, I just have to buy one.

There's just not enough that a camera does to warrent messing with what the company puts on it by default. The limitations of a digital camera are purely mechanical. Not software induced. You can't hack the software and get a better CCD or a better lens or better refresh time.

Is this a really big deal?

[petwalrus]

I figure so long as the camera API is open (i.e. you can plug the memory card into the computer and get the pictures off of it normally), I'm not too concerned how it works internally. The internals could change often and drastically, and it would seem like a fruitless effort to publish this data.

Re:Crippleware

[drenehtsral]

I have a Canon Digital Rebel, their consumer-range digital SLR. They make a next model up which features heftier physical construction, more end-user control over light metering, and a couple other small but useful features. It turns out that other than the case, the electronic guts are the same, and if the firmware were to be open then end users could patch it to have all the extra features without shoveling out the extra bux.
While I love that camera, I despise crippleware when you have a hardware product that is capable of more, but you have to buy a more expensive version of the same device just to flip a handful of bits in a flash-rom somewhere to give you access.

Hmm...

[delmoi]

I don't know why camera companies make their camera's locked down, but it might have something to do with support costs. Make the software easy and limited and you don't have to worry about people fucking them up.

The other thing is, I think that the majority of people who buy a camera, digital or otherwise just want it to 'work'. The low-cost of actually using digital cameras, as opposed to their film counterparts has lead to a lot more people taking pictures as a hobby (I regularly see people randomly walking around snapping pictures of buildings and stuff now), which means more people are going to be interested in messing around with the shutter, etc.

But not many people are going to want to try hacking the CCD driver to to take prettier pictures. Not many people are going to want to play video games on their cameras when they could buy a gameboy or something, and really there aren't that many interesting applications to put on a camera.

(the few I can think of involve automation, for doing things like time-lapse photos and such, but you could always just hook a camera up to a regular computer to do that)

No, but maybe eCos

[DavidNWelton]

Linux is probably a bit big, but something small and light like eCos might run quite well. They even mention digital cameras in this text which I found with google:

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/ecos-announce/1999/ms g00000.html

Closed Digital Cameras - Does Anyone Care?

[ColdPepsi]

The answer to the question is no. Nobody cares. When you buy a camera, you want to take photos. Preferably good quality ones.

If you want to do something neat with the image, you put it on your PC and fiddle with it. You don't need to fiddle with it inside the camera.

I know some people enjoy the challenge of hacking the firmware, but the camera companies aren't going to waste time and money opening up their specs so they can sell 3 more cameras to the people who care.

And besides, if you were a real hacker, you would take the damn thing apart and figure it out yourself.

Software = product differentiation

[terminal.dk]

The difference between digital cameras are often the software. The same camera can be sold in different packges (Canon IXUS/Elph vs their S-series vs G-series), and they are basicly the same camera with different sensors and packaging.

The cheap cameras has very bad image processing algorithms, so they would gain from open software. They would still use an old plastic bottle for molding the lens though.

The famous example of camera hacking is the Russian hack for the low-end Canon EOS 300D. 2 bytes changed enabled the custom functions menu of the big brother, the 10D. Then there were a few more mods. Think the best firmware had 20 bytes changed, and closed the gap between the 2 products.

The is also lots of things that are the same between the Canon 20D and the Canon 1D Mk II. If the extra features were enabled in the 20D, there would be even less reason to pay 3 times as much for the 1D Mk II. (It also has more buffer RAM + weather sealing).

So it is there in the hope they can sell the same product as 3 different ones.

Re:Software = product differentiation

[davidmcn]

If only I had mod points to give you! Read through every comment, not wanting to be redundant, and you said what I had planned on. If you can make a single product, and pass it off as three, at different price points, by enabling and disabling features why not do it? I'm sure those of you in software have programmed features that your boss told you to turn off for now, so they can sell it to the client later.

Re:Software = product differentiation

[radish]

The 20D and 1DmkII are different animals, there are things the 20D can do which the 1D can't, and vice versa, and not just in software, in hardware too.

Re:Software = product differentiation

[ikekrull]

I'm not sure anybody who wants the 1 big feature of the 1Ds-II (full 35mm-sized sensor) is going to get it from a 20D, no matter how much firmware hackery takes place.

The EOS 1D is the only digital SLR that I know of that has a full-sized sensor, which makes it more or less the only digital camera useful for doing professional ultra-wide photography (although that is admittedly a small market). As such it commands a price premium, its not simply a 20D with 'unlocked' features.

Also, there are a significant hardware differences between the 300D and the 10D such that only a couple of firmware-added functions actually do anything useful on the 300D. The 300D has different sensors, buffer size/speed etc.

I don't think the Canon EOS range is really the target of this article, the EOS's actually run DOS, and aren't really the kind of thing a hacker tends to get frustrated with - a digital SLR (even a cheap one like the EOS-300D) is all about giving you control of the photographic process.

While I am aware there are firmware-disabled features shared between the 10D and 300D, and the others in the range, with the exception of 'lock mirror up', there aren't any 'hacked firmware enabled' features on the 300D that I would find to be functional or useful on the 300D in the real world.

What feature on the 300D unlocked by the hacked 10D firmware do you find most useful? (this is a genuine question)

Re:Software = product differentiation

[glaqua]

The is also lots of things that are the same between the Canon 20D and the Canon 1D Mk II. If the extra features were enabled in the 20D, there would be even less reason to pay 3 times as much for the 1D Mk II. (It also has more buffer RAM + weather sealing).

You should check it out, I hacked the firmware for my 20D, using the firmware for the 1D MKII, and it went from 5 frames per second to 8 frames per second, I now have a spotmeter, and all the plastic parts became magnesium, and, as you noted, it grew a larger buffer and rubber weather seals. The viewfinder also went from 90% coverage to 100% coverage.

seriously, you used a bad example, because in this case, the product differentiation really is in the hardware capabilities.

Re:Software = product differentiation

[Lisandro]

Happened to me recently while looking for a cheap GSM cellphone. I bough the Siemens A56 phone, which i thought it was a pretty nice gadget, until i ran onto a site that described how to flash the firmware of the more expensive C56. So i thought 'what the hell'; brought a car adapter (for the data connector) and hacked myself a serial cable.

40 minutes later i have a phone sporting GPRS, Java, keyboard shortcuts, voice dialing, polyphony and sound recording/reproduction, hands free, voice commands, and more avaiable memory. The only thing it lacks it's a color screen, and all for the price of an entry level phone plus 10 bucks. I thought i was lucky, but later found out this is very common for cellphones. The phones are identical (you can even exchange their fronts!), with the difference that the A56 is software crippled.

Thinking it later, it kinda made sense. Suppose you sell the phone for $10; you sell five for $50. Now you introduce a cheaper model for $7 and a more expensive one for $12 (which are all the same internally, with practically zero cost to you other than repackaging). Now you sell three of each, covering more price segments; you made $57. It's a quick example, but it's how it works.

Re:Software = product differentiation

[james_a_craig]

Some of the "unlockable features" of the 300D are actually rather handy; for example, the maximum sensitivity of the sensor can be changed from ISO 1600 to 3200, the auto-focus modes can be selected (not from the 10D's full range, but it's still nice to have it in one-shot mode and know the camera won't go off on a focus hunt half-way through framing a shot), the ability to set flash exposure compensation, and the ability to fix the shutter speed in aperture-priority mode are all rather useful features.

A more open camera would allow various other features that have sadly vanished from modern cameras; time-lapse features spring to mind, as do things like selectable metering areas.

Obviously, Canon rather like these features to remain absent in the 300D as it provides a reason to buy the more expensive models, even for those who don't particularly need full-frame sensors, waterproofing or magnesium alloy bodies. There's also the matter of auto-focus algorithms, which are one of the areas of significant difference between camera manufacturers - presumably Canon would be less than impressed to find their code copied in a Nikon or Minolta. :)

Re:Software = product differentiation

[kwalker]

I believe he was referring to the 1D MkII not the 1Ds MkII. Those are physicially different cameras. The 1Ds is the one with the 35mm full-frame 16.7 megapixel sensor. The 1D has a 1.6 cropping factor and an 8.2 megapixel sensor.

Re:Software = product differentiation

[Pow]

What feature on the 300D unlocked by the hacked 10D firmware do you find most useful? (this is a genuine question)

+ Changing RAW Embedded JPEG quality to save space when shooting raw.
+ 1/200 Flash sync speed in Av mode.
+ Flash exposure compensation

Re:Software = product differentiation

[Too Much Noise]

Actually, 20D has the 1.6x crop. The !D MkII has the new (and slightly awkward sometimes[*]) 1.3x crop factor.

[*] as some 'standard' focal lenghts have no equivalent primes for 1.3x crop in Canon's line-up yet.

Re:Software = product differentiation

[moeffju]

Flash Exposure Compensation,
ISO3200 (although it tends to get noisy),
small, low-quality embedded JPEG (to save space).

MAME; Re:One reason for open cameras

[jdunlevy]

The only reason I can think of for having an open-source camera OS is so someone could port MAME to it.

You mean like this?

Re:MAME; Re:One reason for open cameras

[mveloso]

Yeah, but for cameras other than the DC265.

Interesting question.

[jd]

There may be an OS scanner that you can run over USB that you could use. Probably the easiest way to find out would be to get a semi-functioning/non-functioning camera and open it up. You'd then be able to see the processor used, dump any ROM/Flash chips, etc.

Re:Crippleware

[fembots]

but you have to buy a more expensive version of the same device just to flip a handful of bits in a flash-rom somewhere to give you access.

I think this is becoming some sort of a software cost, that you're paying more money for Version 2, which may take another 3 months to develop.

Image Formats Not Image Capture

[Dunx]

I'm far more interested in getting the images off my camera than in hacking my camera, so I don't really care about how open the camera itself might be. In that sense I do not care: as long as the images are in an open format and that the images are stored on an open storage meium then I'm happy.

It would be really cool to be able to reprogram the camera, but I wouldn't be the one doing it.

Some People...

[eno2001]

...just are not visionary enough. For all this talk of "innovation" from the closed side of the technology world, they sure can't see farther than their own faces. Here are some really good reasons why you would want to reprogram your camera:

1. Turn it into a temporary USB data storage device if it has a USB port on it
2. If it has audio capability, turn it into a digital audio recorder that works kind of like a mini-cassette recorder (ie. shitty quality, but lots of record time)
3. Make it into a "cam" that can be attached to your PC for live web cam stuff
4. Turn it into a video recorder for short clips in a format like MJPEG
5. Make it into an e-book reader that can read PDF or Postscript docs (after all many digital cameras have scroll wheels and multiple menu buttons, etc...)
6. Play some old school video games on them: Space Invaders, Pac Man, maybe even Doom. Doom's been done before...
7. Set it up for motion sensitive mode. It will span a picture only when something in the field of view moves
8. Or similar to above, in motion sensitive mode with USB, it could just dump the image straight to your PC whenever there is motion. Imagine combining this with a laptop to work as a spycam...
9. MP3 or Ogg Vobis player the works from CD or Flash media (again if your camera has audio capability)
10. A USB video monitor. Combine your camera with a Mac Mini and a foldup KB and mouse and you have a pretty compact but powerful system for travelling. (Yes, I don't mind squinting at small screens)

That's just ten ideas to get you started. I'm sure I'm not the only person with any imagination here... Note, I didn't say that these ideas would work for every camera, but they are feasible for at least some models. I'm pretty sure my Sony CD Mavica could do a lot more than it does right now. But I'm also pretty sure they probably have the OS on a ROM...

Re:Some People...

[cbiffle]

Personally, I like to have a nice, working, manufacturer supported camera more than I like having a 1337 LEENOOKS-2000 fuzzy image device. But then, I also stopped using Gimp and Linux in favor of Mac and Photoshop, so flame on.

I really hope the parent was tongue-in-cheek. In terms of a modern digital camera, my DiMAGE A2:

1. Turn it into a temporary USB data storage device if it has a USB port on it

Check.

2. If it has audio capability, turn it into a digital audio recorder that works kind of like a mini-cassette recorder (ie. shitty quality, but lots of record time)

Check. The video function works fine for this, and if you leave the lens cap on, the black-frame video takes up almost no space.

3. Make it into a "cam" that can be attached to your PC for live web cam stuff

Check.

4. Turn it into a video recorder for short clips in a format like MJPEG

Check. You have, y'know, used a digital camera, right? MJPEG's been the main video capture format for years, only now being supplanted with MPEG4.

7. Set it up for motion sensitive mode. It will span a picture only when something in the field of view moves
8. Or similar to above, in motion sensitive mode with USB, it could just dump the image straight to your PC whenever there is motion. Imagine combining this with a laptop to work as a spycam...


Check, check.

That said:

5. Make it into an e-book reader that can read PDF or Postscript docs (after all many digital cameras have scroll wheels and multiple menu buttons, etc...)
6. Play some old school video games on them: Space Invaders, Pac Man, maybe even Doom. Doom's been done before...
9. MP3 or Ogg Vobis player the works from CD or Flash media (again if your camera has audio capability)
10. A USB video monitor. Combine your camera with a Mac Mini and a foldup KB and mouse and you have a pretty compact but powerful system for travelling. (Yes, I don't mind squinting at small screens)

The fascination people have with putting Ogg/DOOM/eBooks on random objects amuses the hell out of me. I have a Vorbis player on my iPaq, and an eBook reader on my iPod, and never use either of them. As for porting games...oi. I recommend a GameBoy.

In response to the original poster, my camera's a MIPS, according to my firmware disassembly. Here's something I'm amazed nobody has mentioned:

My camera's firmware contains a TCP stack, PPP implementation, SMTP implementation, and dinky FTP server. It's pretty clear that the manufacturer intends (or intended) to release a modem of some sort. Yet, nobody seems to have mentioned network connectivity!

Re:Some People...

[eno2001]

The fascination people have with putting Ogg/DOOM/eBooks on random objects amuses the hell out of me. I have a Vorbis player on my iPaq, and an eBook reader on my iPod, and never use either of them. As for porting games...oi. I recommend a GameBoy.

That's the problem. I DON'T want to have to have multiple devices to do the things I want. I want one device that does it all. That's why I don't like PDAs. They are geared towards the business man. What is needed is a portable device that has the flexibility and power of a desktop computer, with many built in input devices (scrolll wheels, mousepad, camera, mic, line in, digital audio in, etc...). Personally, I'm an artist first and a computer guy second. The way I look at it, any portable machine that I use should be able to do anything I want it to based on the software I load. I shouldn't need discrete devices. I don't want to look like some kind of geek Rambo with a belt full of devices. That's just lame. I want to be able to wear my black turtleneck and wireframes with a clean shave while scripting with eye tracking and Dasher, talking to someone with voice over IP, taking pictures, making music and e-mailing all at the same time. (Or individually) But I want it all on one device. it's just not here yet. So we try to beat the existing devices into submission.

Re:Some People...

[Uncle Jimmy]

Go buy a DV camera. It covers about half of those already.

Re:Some People...

[YrWrstNtmr]

But I want it all on one device. it's just not here yet. So we try to beat the existing devices into submission.

Starting with a dedicated camera is not the way to go. Start with a PDA or cellphone. The ergonomics of good picture-taking does not mesh well with keyboard/thumbing/mousing/etc.

Re:Some People...

[Inhibit]

Sure, I'll bite. When'd the parent mention Linux wiseguy?

Re:Some People...

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

My camera's firmware contains a TCP stack, PPP implementation, SMTP implementation, and dinky FTP server.

No wonder they are so expensive!

Re:Some People...

[asuffield]

You forgot the most important one:

0. Turn it into a better camera

Proprietary software invariably *sucks*. Proprietary firmware invariably *sucks*. I have lost count of the number of proprietary things I've seen which badly needed obvious, simple improvements in the way they worked. Cameras are no exception. Especially the interface. There's no excuse for them being that clumsy. I should *not* be waiting a perceptable length of time for a response to a button push, even if it starts some long-running operation.

Note that the absence of these flaws in *your* camera is not an excuse for this, because most of the consumer ones *do* have these flaws.

Re:Some People...

[koekepeer]

2. If it has audio capability, turn it into a digital audio recorder that works kind of like a mini-cassette recorder (ie. shitty quality, but lots of record time)

Check. The video function works fine for this, and if you leave the lens cap on, the black-frame video takes up almost no space.

in fact on my snapshot camera (Canon A75) there's a function to record wavs associated with a photograph. make a pic of a nice lookin' babe and ask her number. good for supporting your memory the next day *grin*

of course, this was meant for you guys who use a camera for something else than taking pictures *under* ladies' skirts ;^)

Re:Some People...

[eno2001]

Good point. The gimp-print drivers for the Epson Photo printers in Linux way outperform the Windows drivers in quality of print. And they do it because that ine of printer is software driven.

Re:Some People...

[eno2001]

PDAs suck. I have yet to find one that doesn't come with useless crap like a day planner/contact list. I don't need that functionality and it's a waste of space for me. What I really want is a device that I can make do pretty much anything. If I want the device to be a thin client to my application server at home, then it should be able to do that. If I want it to be a media player, then it should be able to do that just by loading different software. Anything else just plain sucks.

I don't want resources to be wasted with useless crap that I don't need. I want the machine to be able to be wiped clean of all the boring business apps and instead be loaded up with useful things like X window, Xine, ssh, vncviewer, dasher. But I also would like it to just be dedicated competely to one task. All resources with the pedal to the metal just for kick ass performance on one task. This is not impossible with today's technology.

I still shake my head in wonder at the people who walk around with a cell phone, a PDA, a digital camera, a laptop or tablet PC, and an MP3 player all strapped to them at once. They look like present day court jesters or something. I don't want to look like that. I care about how I look, and I think wearing a bunch of digital devices looks bad. Having to lug all the around is just as bad as it looks too. I want this stuff to be completely concealed so that I look pretty much like myself, only augmented. That's my goal and we're not there yet. Proprietary software hasn't helped me reach that goal, but open software has helped me get a lot closer. At the moment, I have a tablet PC that I can use as a thin client to my application server at home. I use it with the Twiddler one-handed input device so that I don't have to use the keyboard or the useless virtual keys on the screen. If I could get the tablet to be 1/4th of it's present size and have it display a virtual screen on my glasses, I'd be even closer to what I want.

Re:Some People...

[eno2001]

Hehehe. I didn't. At least not until one of my replies.

Re:Some People...

[arkane1234]

PDAs suck. I have yet to find one that doesn't come with useless crap like a day planner/contact list. I don't need that functionality and it's a waste of space for me. What I really want is a device that I can make do pretty much anything. If I want the device to be a thin client to my application server at home, then it should be able to do that. If I want it to be a media player, then it should be able to do that just by loading different software. Anything else just plain sucks.

Ummm... my iPaq has Linux on it right now. Basically it can do anything a computer can do...
Within reason of course, due to the fact that I'm a cheapass and only have a limited amount of RAM.
I even went as far as using my PDA as a wireless network sniffer once, capturing packets as I walked around and dumping networks to a file.

I still shake my head in wonder at the people who walk around with a cell phone, a PDA, a digital camera, a laptop or tablet PC, and an MP3 player all strapped to them at once. They look like present day court jesters or something

I'd have to agree. The worst part is that we just don't have the technology to build a PDA/CellPhone/Digital Camera/laptop-or-tablet-pc in something that would be easily carried in the palm of your hand. Sure, we have phones with cameras, or phones with pda, and java running on phones, but we're just not to the point that we can put that much functionality into a single device without it taking a significant amount of power and space. Not to mention that in todays world, things are not priced on what the actual item is, but on how much entertainment it will bring you, or how much money it will save you.... so imagine how much a PDA/CellPhone/Digital Camera/laptop-or-tablet-pc would cost you...

Digital Rebel Hacked Firmware

[`Sean]

Here's the main info page that gives an English overview of all the hacked features: http://www.bahneman.com/liem/photos/tricks/digital -rebel-tricks.html

Re:Digital Rebel Hacked Firmware

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

Thanks for that link, some neat tips and tricks in there too!

Somebody mod parent up!

Re:Digital Rebel Hacked Firmware

[lostguy]

Should click on the poor guy's google links to help pay for the slashdotting. His server is probably a smoking crater by now. :-)

Re:Digital Rebel Hacked Firmware

[Fred_A]

Ewww, the Canon runs DOS....

I'm glad I got a Nikon (although it might run DOS too, who knows...)

Re:Digital Rebel Hacked Firmware

[tlhIngan]

I do believe one of the D70 CPUs run iTRON, a version of that Japanese open-source embedded OS. Examine the firmware update file and you'll find it.

Don't know what the other CPU runs, though.

Re:Digital Rebel Hacked Firmware

[`Sean]

I'd venture to guess that the hits from the other thousand sites that have been linking to him for the past year or so generate infinitely more traffic than some random comment buried deep in the Slashdot hierarchy. ;)

You're too late...

[JustNiz]

MAME has already been ported to a camera!

http://digita.mame.net/

I have heard of a Canon hack

[G_of_the_J]

It supposedly adds some features to the Digital Rebel that are only supposed to be available in their more expensive camera (D20?).

No incentive

[jmorris42]

They don't release specs or source for a simple reason, lack of interest.

Look guys, lots of buyers of wireless access points are geeks so a developer community can build up around the popular products, see Linksys for an example. But how many digital camera owners are developers? And just how many would WANT to develop on a camera? Yes, if my Olympus came with the source tree on the CD there are a couple of itches I'd probably scratch but I really can't think of any major software issues with the sucker I'd want to work on as far as adding major new functionality. JPEG2000 support might be nice but I seriously doubt the camera has the compute power to make it practical.

The one feature I'd add to mine is to have it grab an image from the CCD on power on and see if all the pixels are black, if so display a notice to remove the lens cover instead of grinding away on the motor first.

I don't need an open source camera

[Big_Al_B]

My camera has more than enough features for it to be useful to me. I would like to master the included functionality (which I have not made time to do) before I tried adding any.

Besides, my toaster, my POTS phone, my TV, and my watch, are also closed-source but extremely well-featured without my input.

In other words, "No.' I usually buy more features than I use anyway, and like to spend my time on more useful or more entertaining things.

Flame suit on

[TequilaJunction]

You're starting with a fundamental assumption that software should be open. I don't agree with that in all cases. I agree that markets should determine the value of open software without government intervention ala DMCA. The fact that many businesses have opted for Linux proves that there is value to open software. So if you think there's value to it, go build one! Or start a company to build a few thousand. There's no point is asking why there's no open cameras, toasters, or TV's. It's not like you can only read a Kodak camera file with a Kodak PC running Kodak OS.

Hacking the firmware

[Max Threshold]

I ran strings on my digicam's firmware and found a lot of intriguing stuff, but I have no experience with this sort of thing. I have no idea where I'd even begin trying to decompile it.

Why cameras stay closed (unfortunately)

[G4from128k]

I agree that open would be nice, but I can see several reasons why the camera's remain closed.

1. Competitive reasons: if documentation comes out before the camera (it would need to in order to make openness contribute to the camera's success), the competition gets to see/copy/out-market the new camera
2. Japanese: Most cameras are now designed and built by Japanese companies. Translation of the documentation, code, and specs into English (the open standard language) is a cost.
3. Proprietary chips: Companies such as Canon use custom hardware such as the Digic Processor making it hard to be open.
4. Support costs: Devoting engineers to supporting SDKs and openness initiatives would add cost.

The big problem is that camera electronics don't have the market persistence of other computer technologies. New generations of the electronics and software inside of cameras wholly supplant old ones. Its not like cameras run on decade's old protocols such as those found in networking and servers. The rapid design-sell-drop cycles leave little room for post-launch open source initiatives and the proprietary/competitive nature of the camera business leaves little room for design-phase involvement by non-employees.

As long as the camera supports a few simple open standard interface protocols (storage, USB, printing, etc.) then the internals can be (and will be) proprietary black boxes. At best, open source can help post-process images. Although a few geeks, such as the poster and myself, might complain at black-box cameras, we represent such a small sliver of the user base as to be easily ignored.

Does anyone read titles?

[Ender_Stonebender]

When they make my perfect digital convergence device (combination cell phone, PDA, 3+ MP digital camera, 40GB USB hard drive, MP3 player, FM stereo radio, and GPS device), then it will matter. But for a digital camera that's *just* a digital camera, operating systems and openness don't matter as long as the thing is capable of taking pictures and loading them onto a PC. There's only a few items beyond those two that a digital camera needs. (Timed picture taking and zoom are good, manual settings for some things...but how many of the 90,000 possible features of a digital camera are you actually going to use?)

--Ender

Programable cameras.

[adameros]

Yes people are reprogramming their cameras to get new or changed features. A good example if the Canon Digital Rebel. The Rebel (or D300) runs a variant of DOS. People have disassembled and rewriten sections of the camera to enable things like mirror lock-up, and second curtain sync, and a few other cool things. And on some of the other Canons, people have hacked the firmware to remove the time limits on recording movies. I would love it if my Rebel had an open source OS where I could load the modules for the features I want. Or improve on the features there, like artistic filters or the ability to do multiple exposures, or even time lapse photography. People are already working on such things (like the fames Canon firmware hack), and I hope the work continues.

A possible reason

[Skudd]

Last year I purchased a Fuji FinePix A205, and after I learned about the EXIF data it stored, I decided to do a bit of research.

My camera is not a top of the line camera by any means, but from what I gather, it could be with a small firmware hack.

Camera manufacturers are most likely "keeping the lid" on them, simply because they will use the same hardware for a fully automatic point-n-shoot that they will for a higher end, you-controll-it model. They will just use a different firmware to restrict certain portions, such as exposure length, focusing, etc.

I am an avid storm spotter, and I've spent many hours trying to photograph lightning. Even though it's a difficult task as it is, a camera that doesn't let you specify a 2 second exposure makes things even more difficult.

And for the mindless eye-candy spamming, here's my lightning pictures. All of the images on that URL are Copyright © 2004 by their respective owner(s).

Re:Crippleware

[radish]

You can get a hacked bios for the dRebel, and some of the missing features are added. Many of the interesting ones aren't though, because the hardware is not the same, regardless of what some people may have you believe.

For obvious reasons...

[Kaa]

But why does nobody seem to care about openness in digital cameras?

Well, for obvious reasons :-) Digital cameras are not general-purpose computing devices. They are tightly intergrated single-use devices which include a lot of custom hardware that tends to change every six months or so.

In any case, I am not sure what are you trying to achieve. If you want to take a stab at better image processing, high-end digital cameras give you "raw" files with more-or-less-raw data from the sensor -- go play with it. If you want to control the camera from a computer, again, there are cameras which will allow you to do that. If you want to hack around with the code in the camera, it's also possible -- I know of at least one hack which adds capabilities to a Canon Digital Rebel...

Re:For obvious reasons...

[Tumbleweed]

I can think of a few reasons, right off the top of my head:

1) Improving the UI. Many cameras suffer from poor UI design.

2) Improving algorithms in the firmware. Many reviews I read on DPReview show that many cameras have overly-aggressive sharpening, etc. There are obviously many settings in most cameras that aren't controllable via the normal UI that could be if it were opened.

3) Adding support for new file formats and software features.

4) Adding support for more settings, or changing default settings. A 'SNAP' (hyperfocal) mode could and should be available on every camera, for instance. Or having some easily-accessible presets.

I'm sure there are lots of other things that could be added if it were made possible.

must be drugs?

[poptones]

those things you talk about all require additional HARDWARE in order to function. All the software in the world won't add GPS functions to a camera that doesn't have accessability to GPS hardware.

I bought a 3MP digital camera for $99 and that was about a year ago. today you can get a 5MP for about that price. Anyone who wants a digital camera can get one for less than a week's salary at the mcdonald's. You may not be able to hack the CPU, but so what? they're cheap, low end commodity goods anyway and not something you can typically "overclock" or even tweak - even the JPEG compression is often done in the hardware of the cheap, dedicated camera controller chip.

But all the parts are there - the image sensor, the camera body itself, the connector for the memory card. You can combine all that with a $100 DSP protoboard and go to town. How much more "open" do you need?

Re:must be drugs?

[yasth]

Actually, I think 5mp are more like $120 for one with optical zoom, but some of that might be dollar loss against world currencies. But I think that is the point, if you bother to hack a camera it might take you a year before you got anything more then "hello world", and tetris type stuff. In the mean time there might well have been 2 (or possibly even 3) product releases by the manufacturer in your chosen camera's product space. So say you have been able to add some sort of bastardized manual focus to the camera that is now either already out of stores or on the clearance shelf. It just isn't all that useful, you know? And your wonderful hack probably won't apply to any of the future models as they switch supliers often. Also most of the things you could add just aren't all that wonderful, at least without some more buttons.

I mean in all honesty, all the cameras I've seen have had upgradeable firmwares, which makes it a cinch to hack. Most of the time it is just a public button combo, and a menu item to flash the firmware. I know of pro development systems that are harder then that.

The only people hacking cameras are the people hacking those "disposable" digital cameras, and even then the technology has changed so much that it is hard to justify. (Wow, you can get a 2mp camera for $15 plus the trouble of making buying a cable, and 0 support, or you can buy a real one for $40 with cables and (theoretically) some support. Of course when they started hacking them, it was more like $100, and so it looked like a good deal.)

Once the digicam market settles down a bit (and it will, there are practical and theoretical limits to both how many megapixels can be added and still have a small indoor capable camera, and how many a human really can percieve.), then there will be enough time to consider hacking. Though who know it could all end up folded into a phone anyways.

Canon Rebel hack

[poszi]

Two words: "Unintended uses"

There is already a precendent. The firmware of Canon Digital Rebel has been hacked enabling most of the features that are present in a more expensive 10D. Aparently Rebel is a crippled version of 10D and most of the functionality is already there. The hack is available here. It's a great thing for Rebel owners.

Extended Functionality

[LordHatrus]

I like my digital camera very much, but I concur that some serious firmware haxoring should take place. For instance, the exposure time is normally limited on most digital cameras, probably because any more exposure time would show the huge mass of CCD "fuzzies" static that would accumulate. But it would be a nice feature, and currently impossible with installed firmware. Also, easy hacks might include "night vision" type settings, and also perhaps mp3/ogg and movie playback, for kicks and giggles. Or maybe inbuilt editing tools that surpass the closed firmwares. But also what the open firmware would allow for, is that many new cameras can be used as webcams... in a WINDOWS environment, but rarely on the mac and certainly none for Linux. Open firmware would allow people to more easily develop webcam software of this type.

Too late

[cgenman]

Too late.

Because camera makers are 'evil' corporations

[Gordo_1]

But seriously, the negatives outweigh the positives from their perspective (hint: their eyes have dollar signs instead of pupils).

Off the top of my head, a couple reasons:

1. They maintain their technological advantage against competitors longer by keeping things closed.
2. Support costs are kept to a minimum because the dolt answering the phone in first line support doesn't have to figure out whether the user has converted the camera into a portable Mame device. (Yes, I know it's been done...)

Very good idea...already thought about it

[TheStick]

This is already done with Graphing calculators (See TI's models), but I'm waiting to be able to put new programs on my cell phone, digital camera, PS2, Xbox or to be able to listen to my ogg music, or to change its general behavior, or...why not install linux? But no. Those companies don't want you to. You want a phone that can read mp3 or ogg, you pay 300 more bucks. You want to synchronise your cell phone with Evolution, you buy a PDA. You want to read DivX movies on your digital camera, uh-uh. Buy our brand new 600 dollar product. It's all about profit and sales. I sure hope things'll change!

Hyper-Competitive....

[skribble]

Photography has always been extreamly competitive. Especially the big three (one part Canon, one part Nikon, one part Pentax, Olympus & Minolta). They like to keep things secret, or patented etc. The value to Canon of having the first USM lenses, and then OIS lenses must of been hugh. Before that Nikon dominated, now Canon has the larger share among Sports phtographers and has made large inroads into other areas.

Software is also important. Nikon and Pentax use virtually identical CCD chips in there moderately priced Digital SLR's (~6MB CCD made by Sony) but the results and performance of these Cameras are quite different (Nikon Performace is amazing, Nikon produces shaper images too).

Also, FWIW, I'm not sure what benifit an Open Source Camera OS would have, the competition here drives new advances. That said I do like the idea of a Standard Digital Negative such as what Adobe proposes (though I'm not sure I want Adobe owning a standard).

Re:Hyper-Competitive....

[Wolfier]

FWIW, I've been using a D70 and a ist DS for some time now and I prefer the Pentax over the Nikon for it's lack of Moire pattern, and a generally more natural image.

Sharpness in DSLR depends more on the lens than anything else. If image is sharper because of software, it's called "in camera sharpening", something better done with the Gimp.

Re:Hyper-Competitive....

[afedaken]

At last! Another Pentax owner!

What are you using for a card, and how many shots can you take before the buffer fills?

As an istD owner and Pentax fan, I probably would have upgraded, but for the SD slot. (I've got a large investment in Compact Flash.)

Got any images up anywhere?

While we're at it...

[Adam Heine]

...why hasn't anyone made an open-source toaster so I can write my own toasting OS?

too late ....

[taniwha]

Who wants the bad publicity of being the first camera to be virus infected? .... you're way too late - I was unloading a friend's camera while travelling in India a while back when the darn thing tried to infect my lattop .... he'd picked it up in a i-cafe. Not quite a firmware virus as you describe but a camera virus never-the-less

Re:too late ....

[jridley]

Doesn't sound like the camera had a virus, just a virus infected file was in the memory. Same as a floppy or a thumb drive or a hex printout on paper could have a virus.

Two reasons

[arodland]

1) There really isn't much point to it.

2) You're unobservant. Even though there isn't much point to it, people do it anyway. There are projects like this one and some others. None of them do anything useful, but see point 1.

Camera still too early to open

[SuperKendall]

The problem is the technologies used in cameras today are still too immature to open... in that they are still changing rapidly.

I think when the maret starts to stabilize around a technology and resolution that is good enough for most users, we'll start seeing "kit" cameras that you can build and customize yourself. But we are very much in the wild west of camera development, with newer and higher MP sensors coming out pretty raipidly - not to mention different ideas being trield like the stacked sensor of the Foveon chip or the rotated/dynamic ranger layered Fuji stuff.

One nice push in that direction is Adobe with the DNG proposed format. Cameras could start supporting that, but you still have the issue of that being a container for very proprietary data that not everyone can decode well.

ummmmm

[Photoman321]

Your camera uses the digic prcessor made by canon. All recent Canon cameras do.

verizon phones

[hawk]

There is an article, I belive on page B1, of last Thursday's or Friday's Wall Street Journal about litigation over verizon phones. (or was it page A1?)

It seems that verizon ordered the phones that it distributes with features, primarily bluetooth, disabled, instead trying to collect fees for passing these "services" through verizon.

The basis for the litigation is (as I understood it) that this model of phone is advertised independently by the manufacturer, and the buyers didn't get the feature set.

hawk

Re:Crippleware

[Merlynnus]

You can find info about the firmware (not bios) here: http://www.bahneman.com/liem/photos/tricks/digital -rebel-tricks.html

Re:It just works

[Phil246]

are you sure you got the exact camera back? i would have imagined it easier for them to just replace it with a working model if they couldnt fix the problem ( or couldnt be bothered ) - updating the firmware while they`re at it seems like a bit of a useless step and a waste of time for them, unless the problem was with the firmware in the first place and not some hardware fault. I recon it would be easier for them to just pull out what was on the camera, upload it to a new one and send the newer one ( which came with a newer firmware from the factory ) back to you

Re:Umm no

[utopia27]

My Nikon5000 has had numerous firmware upgrades - all to the good as far as I can tell. There are, however, a few things that I'd like to have fixed/improved (reset out of timer & macro mode after each picture in that mode - why?).
There's also the issue of 3rd party plugins, like the remote that's been hacked for Nikons, and TTL flash interfaces that aren't.

Re:Umm no

[Glytch]

Of course firmware won't stop me from laughing at someone who paid $1000 for a piece of plastic with some 10D guts.

It's elitist pricks like you that make me avoid other photographers. I love the hobby, but the "oh my goodness, look at the little plebians with their clearly inferior toys!" attitude of you and your ilk pisses me off.

Good example: high dynamic range imaging

[floateyedumpi]

A perfect example of how a very lightweight programmable interface would be really useful: a common problem in digital (and film) photography is limited dynamic range. A scripting interface to a digital camera could help overcome this.

First the problem. Just to give you some walking around numbers, typical desktop displays offer about 7-8 stops of contrast (e.g. 100:1), high-end plasma TV's offer 10 stops (1200:1), typical natural scenes have a dynamic range of about 18 stops, and the human eye, at a single pupil dilation, can appreciate about 17 stops (well matched to natural, sun-illuminated scenes, not by accident!). When you allow for the adjustment of human vision to illumination conditions, the human brain-eye system can appreciate about 30 stops of dynamic range (a factor of 1 billion:1!), from the faintest star to full-on sunlight. Needless to say, it is impossible to come anywhere close to this with consumer imaging technology.

An interesting way to expand dynamic range and alleviate the problem is to take several exposures with an increasing sequence of exposure times. Typically, to maintain focus and field depth, you'd keep the aperture fixed, keep the CCD gain fixed, and only vary exposure time. With a simple programmable interface to a digital camera, you'd be able to roll your own HDR mode, "scripting" the camera to e.g., take a quick succession of 5 frames separated in exposure time by 1 stop, and store them all in an aptly named sub-directory on your flash card. Trivial to implement, if provided the hooks. Combining the 5 exposures with suitable post-processing can then simulate much large contrast than normally available. An example of this technique is here. As it is, we just have to hope the camera manufacturers provide something like this for us (at whatever price point they find compelling).

Re:Good example: high dynamic range imaging

[RedBear]

I'm not understanding how the thing you're describing is any different from the bracket exposure feature that is on most digital cameras, even most consumer models. My two-year-old Olympus C-750 lets me bracket up to 5 exposures with up to a full stop exposure difference between shots. Isn't that exactly what you're describing? Cameras already do this quite easily.

Then if you shoot RAW you can use a splitting technique to pull two separately compensated JPEG exposures from each RAW image, thus probably getting even more range at either end. But as far as I can tell we don't need to hack the camera to accomplish this. It's a standard bracketing technique.

What would be really impressive is if the camera itself could merge the several exposures, thus giving you vastly increased dynamic range in-camera without you messing with it in post-processing. This won't happen of course because the camera hardware isn't even close to powerful enough to approach the problem, and like metering every combined exposure requires different tweaks to make it look like the actual scene. Perhaps in 10 years.

So far, nobody including you has come up with any worthwhile example of why anyone should really care about hacking their camera. It just isn't useful. The hardware in the camera is already being used to its full potential. It'd be like hacking your toaster so that you could send the toasting commands manually over a serial cable. It would be extremely difficult to improve on the natural toasting ability of the built-in controls.

Interesting factoid about the 1-billion:1 ratio of the human eye though. Very interesting.

Canons -x86, dos

[cgenman]

Most (all?) Canons run on an x86 using a modified Dos. It runs some dos applications fine.

More info here.

HDR images

[Fulg]

One possible use for an Open camera would be capturing High Dynamic Range images.

Debevec has a method where you take multiple shots of the same image at different F-stops, and through some post-processing magic, extract a reasonnable HDR approximation (sorry, you'll have to Google it, I don't have the link handy).

An Open camera would allow someone to program the camera to take the required shots automatically (and possibly even generate the HDR image, though it's probably best to do it offline where CPU power and battery life aren't an issue).

Another possible use is to extract raw data even if your camera only exports JPG images, for those extra bits of precision (I seem to remember some Canon cameras that allow you to get at the raw, 11- or 12-bit image).

I'd like an Open camera, not to run Linux or MAME on it (that's probably a running joke by now) but to add capabilities that the original manufacturer won't bother with due to a limited market, etc.

Of course a decent scripting language could do this as well without "opening" the camera...

I Want My ProgrammableCamera!

[nightwing2000]

If the camera were open source, you could -
-use it as a tethered HDTV camera, probably. (If the exposure is -Make timelapse movies, like those nifty cloud motion pictures.
-Use it to do automated functions like live webcam snapshots. What elese could you program it for?

I have to do something with my old digital camera, now that I don't feel like shelling out $70 for a battery that would hold a charge...

But, the camera people (a) don't want to give secrets to the competition and (b) why let someone else show you how to upgrade your features without buying anything?

I do think they're missing the boat here. Popular "hacker" products - TIVO, Apple II, IBM PC clones, etc. - became popular specifically because you could do extra things to them.

Re:I Want My ProgrammableCamera!

[Lihtan]

Wanna do live webcam shots? Have a look at this:
http://www.katkam.ca/katkamc.htm
This is the software that does periodic high quality shots of the Burrard street bridge/False Creek in Vancouver with a web server connnected Olympus digital camera. The funny thing is the author expains the software existance because:
...Olympus is the only camera company offering an SDK for use with their digital cameras...

Best Guess:

[LordZardoz]

I would guess that because Digital cameras are a hardware product sold at retail, with multiple vendors competing. Having an open spec means revealing your competitive advantages to the competitors.

Why the hell is this important anyway? I would hope that even a Slashdotter would not have any real use for trying to Port linux to a Digital Camera.

END COMMUNICATION

Interoperability/Standards more important

[Shag]

While we Slashdotters might enjoy the idea of being able to tinker with our cameras - and indeed, some cameras offer the ability to do that a little, like Canon's Digital Rebel, which uses a "dumbed down" version of the firmware from the EOS-10D, and can be partially "un-crippled" by a firmware hack - issues of interoperability and standards support are probably more important.

Simply put, people want things that just work. They want cameras that they can plug into a USB port and have recognized, automatically, by Apple's iPhoto, Microsoft's whatever-its-name-is, etc. And they want image files that can be opened in just about anything.

Those expectations are reasonable, and most name-brand digital cameras meet them. A large number of off-brand and "cheap" digital cameras from companies like Sakar, though, don't even come close.

Example: There's a "Kidz Cam" sold various places; I spotted it in a local warehouse store for about $25. It's made by Sakar, and the packaging has a web address for some "internetcoach.com" thing. I was considering getting one for my daughter (if only to dissuade her from asking to use my Canon) but a quick Google found that in addition to being widely viewed as utter crap, it's also not compatible with anything but the (Windows) software that comes with it - and barely compatible with that.

The general recommendation was to hit eBay and buy a few-years-old camera from a more respectable brand. :)

Re:Umm no

[jridley]

only all the time. I've flashed the firmware on digital cameras a dozen times.

Hell, half the products I get, whether cameras or DVD-ROM drives or printers have new firmwares out before I get them out of the box.

The first thing that I do when I buy a new product is check the website for new firmwares. I've gotten some nifty new features in devices by upping the firmware, and that's not even including flashing up the Digital Rebel's firmware to the russian hack version.

Re:Umm no

[jejones]

Actually, I have a Toshiba, um... (pause to look it up) PDR-M700 that indeed actually had a firmware upgrade. The upgrade added features, notably manual focus (a godsend, because the camera's autofocus is unusable at low light levels). See this page for details of upgrading, and this PDF for documentation of the features added and how to use them.

I want to hack my UI

[utopia27]

I don't want into the RT controls of my camera - they should just work. But my camera (Nikon 5000) has more bells and whistles than my Palm, and its UI is pretty lousy. I love the camera - don't get me wrong. It _has_ all the bells and whistles that I want and need for the mechanics of taking great pictures. I _would_ like an SDK to be able to better manipulate them, though, and to "enhance my end user experience".

Ummm

[s.fontinalis]

Because the operating system/firmware is the only thing that differentiates digital cameras? Seriously - the optics, sensor, and memory are all almost fungible. What's left is the camera body design and the UI. Why leave yourself with one less thing to differentiate yourself by?

well..."disposables"

[mako1138]

Your camera already works, so why fix something that's not broken? I couldn't imagine tinkering with the code or hardware of a late-model digital camera -- it'd be way too complex. Most of the functions are probably implemented in hardware, too, so modifying any sort of firmware is unlikely to get you anywhere. The level of integration is sure to be extremely high.

The only cameras that have been looked at and disassembled are the Dakota Digital/CVS "one-time-use" cameras. It's because they're cheap, and hold the promise of extended reuse. They don't have very many features, and probably can't have any more added to them. The attraction is the challenge of breaking a "closed" system, and getting something for (close to) nothing.

The original blue Dakota was based on a custom Sunplus chip. So far there's been one modified firmware release that fixes bugs and extends the picture limit. This model has been discontinued, however. More info here, here, and here.

The newer models have been looked at in depth as well, and they're based on SMaL chipsets. So far methods of reading and writing have been uncovered, and a method of downloading pictures via hacked drivers is documented. The eventual goal is a GPL driver and sofware, and possibly firmware upgrades. Current progress here, and background info here and here.

$25 cable?

[Cryptnotic]

How many crappy cell-phone pictures do you need? Is it more than 100? If it's not, it makes more sense to email them to yourself for $0.25.

Re:$25 cable?

[raygundan]

I bought mine to sync the address book. The time I saved by not putting 200-odd phone numbers in manually was well worth it. The pictures were a nice side-effect. I probably downloaded 10, tops in the 4 months I had the phone.

No one cares...

[danbeck]

No one cares. Or if they do, they have to be part of a very tiny minority.

People just want their camera to take good pictures and be easy to use. Does it matter if they can ssh from their camera to their laptop? No.

reasons to do this

[Frostalicious]

Everyone seems to question why this is even neccesary. Well it isn't, but if you are a camera geek, like the OS geeks of yore, you can get more out of your hardware by writing your own software/firmware. So what could one do with writing your own firmware? Off the top of my head:

Improve metering in extreme situations, like back-lit
Vary jpg compression quality.
Add support for some RAW format, instead of jpg.
Invent your own RAW format.
Customize post processing parameters, like sharpness, saturation etc...
Flash intensity compensation
Add a BULB mode
Add in servo autofocus capability

Sure, some hardware wouldn't support some of these, but a decent dSLR would, and people have already done their own firmware tweaks for the Canon Digital Rebel, to implement some of what I have mentioned.

Unlike Computers...

[JawzX]

Digital cameras are actualy conciderd "consumer devices" and as such are closed to optimize reliability, performance and cost (Much like the recently hotly argued Mac Mini, only more so).

Cell Phones didn't used to be open either, and it's only the cross-over into dual purpose PDA/Phone land that has opened them up. So the question is does your toaster make tell you what alloy it uses in the heating elements? No! Because you aren't supposed to care, and if you did there is probably little you could do to improve upon whay they already have.

Also remember that Digital cameras are rife with proprietary hardware, we're not just talking a hefty RISC CPU crunching numbers on raw data, we're talking about screens that use non-standard resolutions and refresh rates and have proprietary drivers, image optimization ICs that run in combined digital/analog mode to eek the most possible performance out of a given sensor device, etc etc. In most cameras the only things that are even remotely standards based are the flash-card controllers.

If someone were to build a standards-based digital camera that could contain user-upgrable parts/software it would end up either sacrificing a great deal of performance over a device thats not constrained by standards or cost twice as much as the competition.

I for one, as a photographer, appreciate that my digital camera never crashes, (almost) never needs a software update, and gets the most possible performance out of the hardware that they could cram into it.

Mobile phone

[Fuzzums]

I want to weite a new interface for my modile phone (siemens C60).
Does anyone have experience in such things?

Re:Umm no

[radish]

Of course firmware won't stop me from laughing at someone who paid $1000 for a piece of plastic with some 10D guts.

The digital rebel/300d is a nice camera, it basically created the market for affordable dSLRs. Sure there are other better cameras, but they cost considerably more. Knocking it makes you look like an idiot I'm afraid. (Speaking as an ex-dRebel owner and new 20D owner).

Camera vendors aren't stupid

[GIL_Dude]

Why would the vendors want you to hack a consumer product designed to be used like a black box? It would be silly for them, as they would get returns from people who screwed them up, support calls from folks who over-tweaked the white-balance, etc. Keeping items designed to be used like appliances closed makes financial sense.

Four Thirds System for lens interchanging

[Wynken de Word]

Although not really an open-source initiative, (and more of consumer hardware concern), some of the biggest names in digital cameras (Olympus, Kodak, Sanyo, Sigma and Fujifilm, Panasonic) have signed Joint Development Agreements to develop 'Interchangeable Lens Type Digital SLR Cameras.'

http://www.four-thirds.org/en/index.html

"The Four Thirds System uses a Four Thirds-type image sensor, which makes it possible for manufacturers to design extremely compact lenses that combine high mobility and handling ease with the optical characteristics needed to maximize sensor performance. In addition, the Four Thirds System defines an open standard for lens mounts that benefits consumers by assuring compatibility between Four Thirds System bodies and lenses produced by manufacturers that adhere to the standard. The Four Thirds System standard was first announced in September 2002 by Olympus Corporation and Eastman Kodak Company of the United States, and is currently also supported by Fuji Photo Film Co, Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., Panasonic, and Sigma Corporation."

Closed digital cameras? I don't care!!

[tod_miller]

I do care about the proposed formats and raw formats (regarding adobes plight to make thier own raw digital camera format, even though they do not even *make* digital cameras!!

A digital camera is a commodity, the data is important! I couldn't give a fsck or a fdisk how my camera works, just give me the damn bits at the end of it!

Do you care how your DVD player works? Mine was 25 squids are amazon... likewise I don't care how my usb drive works...

sometimes even a geek has to stop prodding!! (except when you are unlocking a $9 camera to download the pics by yourself!!!! :-)

Also: If you buy a decent enough camera, you can suggest that you are going ot be using it as is, with the wisom of the company, to make more money/have a better time, doing what you like, taking pictures, not stuck in a poorly lit room, with a screwdriver!!!

Do some people mark their head board with warranties broken rather than women they have scored with? :-)

nikon d70 hackers

[Maskirovka]

There is a group dedicated to hacking the nikon d70.

you know it's true...

[Thud457]

Linux schminux, we all know what he wants to do!

Re:you know it's true...

[dynamo]

Damn that's a cool link.

Re:Crippleware

[radish]

Thanks, but I already had it installed on mine. Like I said, useful, but it doesn't do everything.

Nikon D70, Custom Curves

[PeterChenoweth]

My Nikon D70 has a nice feature where you can upload a custom color curve into the camera. Then you can choose to use this rather than the built in curves when photographing.

Reds not "popping" enough? Blues too saturated? Want to make the light metering a little less conservative? Want to completely funk up how the camera sees color so that everything comes out like some weird negative? You can do it, and it works extremely well. It's built into the camera and Nikon's software, Nikon Capture 4.0. No hacking required.

No, I can't (and don't want to) rewrite the OS, but I can change how my D70 captures photographs.

http://www.planetneil.com/nikon/custom-curves.html

or

http://fotogenetic.dearingfilm.com/custom_tone_cur ves.html

Why should they?

[supabeast!]

Why should manufacturers devote resources to sharing product specs with the miniscule number of people out there who have nothing better to do than hack a digital camera? Has it occured to you how unlikely it is that more than a few-dozen people worldwide have any intention of doing this, and that of those people, most are hobbyist programmers who would probably only do it with old cameras that can be bought cheap?

There is just no sensible business reason for spending money to do this. And before some smartass claims linux-compatibility as a reason, grow a brain, Linux zealots are not on any major corporation's list of new customers to target.

OT: Your Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

'Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None, obviously market forces will take care of it. '

I see your point, but then I thought about it, and it is actually correct... market forces _would_ take care of it. If a panzer division were coming for Wall Street, then suddenly it would be in Wall Street's best interests to stop it. They'd go buy a few nukes and flatten that division, or something along those lines.

just sayin

No.

[ronchie02]

No one cares..

I would tend to disagree.

[Andy Dodd]

The Canon PowerShot S100 (aka Digital Elph) and all of its Digital Elph descendants basically were THE definition of a compact camera. (At least they were if you actually wanted decent camera functionality, those micro-pen-cams, etc really suck)

Take a guess which memory format the Digital Elphs use.

Get that need-to-hack out of your blood

[cetan]

Buy a $10 Wolf/Ritz/Walgreens "Single Use" digital camera.

Type "Dakota Digital Hack" into Google.

Cut apart USB cables until you feel better.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

D70 OS

[mogglestein]

Seems to be from Fujitsu, http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/microelectr onics/product/micom/tools/ From the 1.0.3 firmware update; Softune REALOS/FR is Realtime OS for FR Family, based on micro-ITRON COPYRIGHT(C) FUJITSU LIMITED 1994-1999

MIne does all that for $21

[g0hare]

Digitrex, piece of junk I paid $21 for and another $25 for 256 RAM. Video w/ audio, still pics, audio recorder, MP3 player, storage, and probably more that I don't care about. And 2 Megapixel is so close to a real photo I don't care.

Re:Crippleware

[Richard_at_work]

Some of the internals on the Rebel (300D) are different as well, it isnt just hte construction. For example the Rebel has a penta mirror instead of a glass pentaprism like the D60 (the model up you are talking about), and the D60 has a much larger image buffer allowing for quicker shots. There ARE differences between the models, it isnt simply a case of the firmware being the difference (I have also heard of horror stories with updating the 300D to the D60s firmware - it isnt 100% compat). Dammit, I HAVE learnt something from sitting between two Photography buffs (one has a 300D to play with, the other has a 20D after upgrading from a D60 - he does track days etc).

Yep

[siskbc]

Since the original story was making FOSS parallels to digital cameras, this would be like reprogramming the BIOS on your computer: you could do it, but there's not much creativity involved, and you'd have to work really hard to get the same functionality as that which came with the thing originally.

The "software" for a digital camera is pretty much photoshop/Gimp. If you're a digital camera fan and want to get involved in FOSS, write a new filter for Gimp. But I doubt the idea of rewriting firmware is attractive to many people.

Re:Yep

[arcade]

Open BIOS? Of course you want an open, standardised BIOS. If you've ever run large server parks with loads of different hardware, you would know to appreciate them.

Oh, and:

http://www.openbios.info/

If only PC-hardware guys could ever start implementing something like Suns boot> prompt - oh and the LOM prompt of course, things would be so much nicer.

Re:Yep

[siskbc]

Open BIOS? Of course you want an open, standardised BIOS. If you've ever run large server parks with loads of different hardware, you would know to appreciate them.

That's a tad different than hobbyists tinkering with their digital cameras for fun. Obviously, when you have 1000 machines, then the effort/machine scales down linearly while the headaches from supporting multiple architectures probably scales as factorial of the number of different systems, so clearly you want the same bios.

Proprietary format means it's not MY picture.

[MCRocker]

I will never buy another Kodak camera because of a horrible experience that I had with my ancient Kodak DC50 camera. It isn't just that it was a bad camera, but that Kodak's attitude was that they wanted to use a proprietary image format and they were going to do everything they could to keep it that way. As a result, they really aren't my pictures.

To this day you can get all sorts of open source digital camera software that supports all sorts of competing cameras from that era, but NOT the DC-50. The reason is that Kodak refuses any requests for information on the data format used for pictures from that camera. Sure, there's an SDK out there, but it's win16 only and the image conversion code is pre-compiled without any source code. You can build a windows 95 compatible program around their DLL, but you can't write a program for Linux, FreeBSD or Java to read their image format. This makes the camera almost useless now because the even the windows software for the camera doesn't work with any version of Windows past Windows 98! If they had open source software on the camera or on the client side, then we wouldn't have this problem. Heck, even if they had an open format for their images, we'd have a fighting chance of being able to convert the images to some more usable format.

So, the end result is that they aren't my pictures. They're effectively Kodak's pictures because I don't have access to them anymore. I can only use the images I took with my camera as long as Kodak decides to support the product, which they don't any more.

Re:Proprietary format means it's not MY picture.

[Grishnakh]

The Windows software it came with is old, so it should work under WINE. Just load it up, convert whatever photos you have, and then dump the camera in the trash.

Honestly, that camera is soooo old, and takes such poor pictures (I borrowed one back in '97 I think; the photos look worse than camera phone photos), why would you care about keeping it and continuing to use it? You can get a $100 digicam now that will easily outperform it. Just don't buy another Kodak.

Avoids the installed base problem

[SteeldrivingJon]

They're selling their cameras as closed, black box appliances. As a result, they're free to change the products' innards whenever they like, as often as they like, as long as the outward functionality remains the same.

If they opened up more with information, people would use the information (not that there's anything wrong with that), and the camera manufacturer would probably end up having less freedom to change the product at will.

It would not be to their advantage to get locked into a particular hardware or software configuration, when some third party product, which relies on a particular design, gets popular.

Re:Crippleware

[rlk]

Doesn't quite make it into a 10D -- as you note, the body is very different, and the FPS and buffering just aren't there. However, certainly the firmware hack does enable some very useful functionality. I store only a small JPEG in my RAW files and sometimes use mirror lockup; flash exposure compensation is also very useful.

The limitations of the Rebel aside, it's a great camera. In addition to the landscape work I enjoy, I also do event photography for a club that I belong to. As limiting as 2.5 fps and 4 frames may seem to be, I rarely run into problems with that, despite a distinctly run and gun shooting style (usually flash recharge gets me first, even at ISO 800). I wouldn't consider a 10D; it just doesn't have enough over the Rebel to justify it, and the Rebel has one objective advantage -- the ability to use EF/S lenses. The 20D is another matter, although the Rebel's easily good enough that I'm not about to shell out $1400 after only a year.

Closed cameras, eh?

[Snaller]

How can you take any pictures if they are closed?

Digital Rebel Hack

[Mr. Flibble]

My next camera purchase will be the Canon Digital rebel - for the very simple reason that it runs DOS - and it is fully hackable. I don't know if you would consider this to be "open" but it is open enough to be hacked...

http://www.bahneman.com/liem/photos/tricks/digit al -rebel-tricks.html

Re:Digital Rebel Hack

[Mr. Flibble]

Damn slashcode and their silly URL tags: HERE is the link:

Digital Rebel Hacks.

Some people...

[iav8c177s]

I can give one solid-gold, straightforward, real-life reason for wanting to hack a digital camera.

My Sony DSC 717 takes infrared photos. You can hear the "clunk" as it moves the IR hot mirror out of the way for "Night Shot" mode. It would be perfect for a low-cost scientific aerial mapping application (e.g., http://www.soils.wisc.edu/~wayne/aerial_photos/aer ials_2003_06_14/), replacing custom-built cameras worth thousands of dollars.

But, because somebody once took naughty pictures with a Sony Handicam (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-214389.html?legacy= cnet, Sony crippled the IR function. Now it only works at wide apertures and slow shutter speeds, leaving aerial IR pictures hopelessly overexposed (yes, I tried ND filters) and blurry (I can only slow to about 70 MPH or the nose rises, as do the passengers' gorges). A simple "don't do that" hack to the firmware would suffice. You *know* that the cripplage is only a couple of lines of code:

if (nightShot) {
honkExposure();
}

But, when asked formally and with the full references to the scientific research we were doing (the lead prof, BTW, is internationally renowned in the field, we ain't just grubby grad students looking to save a buck and peek at Auntie Bowdler's bra), Sony blew us off.

Open source firmware? You bet we'd go for it.

Geocaching with a twist?

[leonbrooks]

"There goes the doorbell again, Bella. If he's carrying a GPS, break his fingers in the door."

they don't want to support it

[idlake]

The main reason is probably that bringing out a programmable platform is a boatload of work for a company. By not opening it up, they don't have to write reams of documentation, they can change things around without being accountable to anyone and without any testing with third party software.

There may be other reasons (licensing issues, desire to keep some differentiation among models even if it's just software), but those would be easy to overcome if it weren't for the huge extra cost and small perceived benefit.

Re:Crippleware

[karnal]

Sounds like licensing for switches.

Pay a few thousand for layer2 functionality, then upgrade for a few thousand more for layer3 functionality....

It is easier on the manufacturers to base their entire product line around one set of engineering.... they can actually make something more stable (or worse) across the entire line.... but it isn't a win for the consumers since we're now aware of the other embedded features, and we "feel" jipped.

You can do *other* things with the cables..

[brunes69]

Such as sync your address book and calendar with the phone. This feature alone more than pays for the cable in time saved IMO.

You can also use them to upload free Java games and applications, without paying $$$ to your provider.

Contradictions

[xgamer04]

When cell phone companies add features to phones:

OMG WHAT A WASTE

When some random thing with a CPU isn't an open spec:

OMG WE COULD H4X0R IT IF THEY OPENED IT!!11

Its all historical

[syousef]

Consider this:

1) Lenses for SLRs digital and otherwise are not compatible between manufacturers. Lenses that can be used to make professional quality photos (crisper, and sharper than consumer lenses ) can cost a small fortune, and this doesn't always follow from the cost of manufacture. R&D is often used to justify costs but most lense technology in use today has been around for some time.

2) Many cameras use proprietary batteries. If you're faced with a choice between a big bulky poorly performing camera that uses AA batteries and a better one with a proprietary battery which would you pick? Genuine proprietary batteries are always overly expensive.

3) Film use to be standard 35mm. Camera manufacturers have managed to fragment the market so that different cameras use different types of memory card. You don't have to buy film for every shot anymore but you may have to buy different memory cards each time you buy a camera.

Camera manufacturers have always prefered a business model where they force their customers to buy most accessories from them at inflated prices. They sell you the camera at a very reasonable price then gouge you elsewhere. Is it any surprise they want to retain control over in camera hardware and software then charge you a mint to access it? Lots of cameras have remote control software, but at an additional cost. If you released open specs you couldn't do that.

Re:Its all historical

[Hadlock]

The digital camera market has already settled down considerably. Most every compact camera uses a standard 3.7v lithium ion battery (the battery in my Nokia 6225 cell phone fits in my girlfriend's Casio Exlim 4MP camera, and vice versa). Compact cameras also use SD cards due to their expandiblity and small size.

Larger cameras use AA batteries (like my Canon A80, and the entire Canon A series). They also tend to use the industry _standard_, compact flash, just like my Kodak DC215 from the mid 90's.

but yeah, if you buy the clearance item, crappy bottom of the line camera that's 100% proprietary and uses no standard items, you're gonna get screwed. I upgraded from my old Kodak (1MP, fixed focus, 2x zoom) to the Canon A80 (4MP, autofocus, 3.2x zoom) and was able to use all my old accesories: Recharable AA batteries, compact flash reader, and they were roughly the same size, so they use the same camera case. Until I could save up money for my 1GB CF card, i Was able to use the included 32MB card and the 128MB card I'd had from the Kodak. I'm still using my dad's old aluminum tripod from the 70's.

Yeah, you can let yourself get screwed by purchasing technology items on a whim, or you could spend 20 minutes researching and save yourself alot of your hard earned dollars.

Re:Its all historical

[syousef]

I have 4 cameras - a Nikon D70 and 2 Olympus ultrazooms and a Canon A70. Not at all crappy. I spend a lot of time researching before I buy anything, so please don't presume to lecture me on that. As things stand:

- 2 of my cameras use Compact Flash, 2 use xD

- 2 of my cameras use AA batteries, 2 use proprietary batteries. Most of the better cameras out at the moment use proprietary batteries.

- If I wanted to buy another digital SLR, I'd be up for a lot of money for lenses unless it was another Nikon. The manufacturer has me very nicely locked me in there. If I want a decent flash unit my best option is a Nikon propriety as well. I lost the eyecup for the camera early on, and haven't replaced it since that tiny piece of rubber sells for $20.

- I want to buy a Panasonic FZ-20 - a very nice camera, and cheaper than buying a image stabilixed lense for my SLR to play around with... but it uses SD cards, so I'd have to get new memory cards.

Lots of competing standards is as expensive and useless as no standard at all. Just because your phone happens to use the same battery as your girlfriend's camera is not reason to conclude everything's compatible if you get a quality camera. It's usually a good idea to have some clue what you're talking about before you post so presumptuously.

Your phone sucks

[xixax]

I can use IR, Bluetooth or pop the MMC card out and read pictures on my PC using a card reader. I think your phone stinks.

Maybe take pics in a change-room or of security facilities? That way the Feds will retrieve the images for you.

Not just cameras - Digital recorders

[eclectist]

I understand your frustration - it mirrors mine for digital multitrack recorders. There is a whole crop of (fairly) cheap, small, 4- and 8-track recorders out there from the likes of Fostex, Tascam, Boss, and Zoom - they all have on-board digital effects processing and all record to CF or MicroDrive or such and all have a usb-port with which one may, among other things, 'upgrade the firmware'. So why not port a copy of mU-linux or Midori or such to it so that we can use c-sound or snd on it, run LADSPA plugins in it, or even after a crafty hack of the CF port, use it as a standalone multitrack recording card? No one wants to open the firmware, or even give out the specs. Hell, some of them (most notoriously Fostex: See http://www.zilber.org/fdms3rip/) record to a proprietary file format, that then needs a proprietary program to decipher it, available only to Win users. Really frustrating. I'd like to think that the manufacturers just don't understand what kind of possibilities exist for profit if they would only let the open-source community play with their machines (ie - the venerable Linksys WRT54G blue-box), and not that they know and 1) don't care or 2) only see short-term loss and not long-term gain.

A feature I wish for

[Michael Woodhams]

that I or somebody might add if the cameras were reprogramable:

A preview mode to show sharpness of image across the picture.

After downloading from the camera, I often find a picture is slightly out of focus or focused on the wrong point - but this is very hard to see on the minute screen on the camera.

If I could (on the camera) see the image passed through an edge detector, or colour-coded for highest spatial frequency, I could know my mistake at the time, and take another shot.

Re:A feature I wish for

[sejanus]

With the DSLR's at least, you can typically "zoom in" the picture to check sharpness.

Re:A feature I wish for

[Michael Woodhams]

I have a DSLR (Nikon D70.) This is (1) insufficiently precise (won't detect subtle lack of focus) and (2) requires far too much fiddling with controls to do routinely.

Brief overview of digital camera chipsets

[Anonymous Coward]

- Canon D30/D60/10D/20D: 8086 microcontroller running ROM-DOS

- Canon 1D/1Ds: PowerPC running VxWorks

- Canon 1D/1Ds Mark II: ARM running VxWorks

- Canon Powershot Sxxx/Axxx cameras: MIPS, some may use ARM.

- Nikon D-SLRs (D2X, D2H, D100, D70): Fujitsu FR-V, running FR/OS (some FR-V chips run Linux too!)

- Nikon Coolpix cameras: SPARC, uses Sierra OEM toolkit

- Sigma/Foveon SD10/SD20: ARM, running Foveon toolkit on custom FPGA

What to add

[Jozer99]

How much could you add to your camera? An extra picture format? It just does not seem worth it for hardware worth only a couple of hundred dollars that will be obsolete in 2 weeks and hopelessly outdated in 2 months. Plus, XBox got hacked because a large number of people have an XBox. How many people do you know with the exact same model digital camera as you?

Why I don't care...

[Fringe]

Open Source scratches an itch. I write it to solve a problem. For example, talking about digital cameras, I wrote and open source'd Picture Pager, a Gallery Creator for digital images. Have been involved in and lead several others too. So I know where-of I speak with OpenSource and open-ness in general.

My closed Canon does everything I want it to, out of the box. It has been reliable, the RAW format has given me lots of flexibility, I can manipulate any features I care to either using the camera interface or afterwards with an EXIF or image editor. And if I didn't like it, there are ten other brands that are true competitors, with multiple models per. So I have no itches. The camera being "closed" is not causing any problems, and by providing them some ROI giving the vendors cause to invest, it has solved problems.

Why solve a non-problem?

What could you possibly do with it?

[gillbates]

Disclaimer: IAEE (I'm an embedded engineer)

There really isn't much point in opening up the specs because the software that runs in these devices is usually far more complicated than a PC. For example, on a recent project, the datasheet for the CPU alone was more than 1000 pages.

Typically, an embedded system like a camera will integrate the video processor, USB interface, serial io, and flash controller on the same silicon with the CPU. Even if you had the complete specs for the device, there isn't much you could do - usually, the board has just enough flash to hold the system, and just enough RAM to get the job done. And the peripheral devices - like the navigation buttons - are usually hard-wired to input pins on the CPU. There's no PCI bus to plug extra devices into, and the memory bus is hardwired to address only a narrow range of memory addresses.

Hate to rain on your parade, but there's generally not much extra functionality that you could get out of such a device. I understand the hacker instinct, but the only thing you're likely to do is break something that already works well enough as it is.

And did I mention the perils of trying to re-solder a ball-grid-array processor to the board? Not exactly for the unskilled...

Re:Umm no

[Grishnakh]

I'm not going to trash the Rebel like the previous poster, but IMO plastic cases are something to be avoided in cameras, especially if you're paying $1k+ for them. If you take your camera in the field a lot, it's very possible it might get dropped. I dropped my Olympus E-10 on a rock once when I fell while hiking (it happens when you're not on a trail). It has a few gouges in the aluminum case, but that's it. A plastic-bodied camera would have sustained serious damage.

Ye of little imagination (Re:I would imagine...)

[nuonguy]

Do you any of you guys even own one? Haven't you guys wanted to hack it at least a tiny bit?

You don't have to reinvent the whole wheel, dammit! That Russian dude just patched the binary!

My gf got me a Canon EOS 20D for xmas. I love that camera! However, the one feature that forces me to carry two cameras is the lack of video recording that every cheap-ass point-n-shoot camera does these days. Not that I understand enough hardware to know this for sure, but I doubt there's a technical reason for that, it's a marketing reason. Anyone care to comment on that?

I fantasize about disassembling the firmware (I hear (from unreliable sources) that it's DOS-like running on an NEC embedded type x86 CPU) and find the place to turn the jne to a jz to enable me to record video with this thing.

Some of the buttons on my camera don't get much use and so some folks have taken to re-assigning them to things they use all the time. Surely you can see the value in that!

I don't see any use for retro games or a PDA functionality on a high-end camera, but I imagine that at some point we should see convergent device that'll satisfy me. Ha! Betcha that Korea and Japan will have a device next year with 5MP phone, 3x optical zoom 5GB MP3 player and a PDA and us americans will never see it. (I'm bitter cuz I've been spending too much time at gizmodo.com and engadget.com peeping me gadgets and phones that I cannot get here)

open API:s before completly free firmware

[pereric]

Well, your points are certainly valid, but I'll give an other view nevertheless: My Sony P70 (Cybershot-something), a compact camera about two years old, can't do manual focus except in specific distances from a menu. Neither can it do completely manual exposures. Would have been nice being able to fix. Also, it would have been nice adding some feature allowing it to act as an USB webcam, or whatever.

I think there are as many reasons for programmability on digital cameras as on PDA:s and ordinary computers. However, maybe the hardware-specific (like CCD control) and standard (like JPEG compression, if you content with the buit-in) software could be left in ROM, and accessed via some more-or-less standard API?

Completly open firmware some day would certainly be nice, but the first step is to be able to run some software of my own choice on it at all. Ideally you could write applications that would run on all ARM cameras (or maybe more, if the cameras had a Java interpreter), using the API for manipulating hardware. The manufacturer could limit syscall parameters to such ones that was within limits of safe operation.

Many people probably don't want to change the motor controls (but it would be nice to be able to iff you want to), but merely fix some annoyace in the UI or play tetris on it ...

Re:Ye of little imagination (Re:I would imagine...

[Grishnakh]

My gf got me a Canon EOS 20D for xmas. I love that camera! However, the one feature that forces me to carry two cameras is the lack of video recording that every cheap-ass point-n-shoot camera does these days. Not that I understand enough hardware to know this for sure, but I doubt there's a technical reason for that, it's a marketing reason. Anyone care to comment on that?

Yes, it's impossible.

Your camera is an SLR: this stands for Single Lens Reflex. The "Reflex" means there is a moving mirror inside the camera that directs light from the Single Lens to the viewfinder most of the time, except when the shutter release button is pressed. Then, the mirror flips up, allowing the light to strike the image sensor instead. You should notice, when you take a photo, that the image in the viewfinder disappears when you press the button.

In addition to this, most dSLRs, if not all, have mechanical shutters in front of the image sensor.

All of this extra mechanics adds up to a far better quality image than you'll ever get with a cheap consumer digicam. The cost, however, is that you can't take movies with them. Regular digicams are basically webcams with better lenses; dSLRs are basically old-style SLR cameras with digital image sensors instead of film. Think of the two this way, and it should all make sense.

Re:Ye of little imagination (Re:I would imagine...

[nuonguy]

I think I understand why the image would disappear from the viewfinder for the time the shutter is open. I don't understand why you can't write out the image that the sensors are sensing 640x480 30times/second, or whatever bandwidth the hardware supports.

I think of it this way: I'd like to set it so that it samples the CCD 30 times per second rather than 5 times per second. I'll hold the shutter open as long as I want, and I'll be responsible for setting the aperture and white balance and ISO speed, but just read the CCD often and send it to the storage device.

BTW, nice ride.

Olympus Low cost SDK available

[Anonymous Coward]

Olympus makes an SDK of Active X controls available for their cameras. Not quite the same as hacking the camera directly, and yeah, you gotta work in an MS world with Active X enabled. However, it is only about $40US
From the web site description...
"The Olympus Developer Program is a collection of tools that allow the software developer to control and access OLYMPUS digital cameras and digital voice recorders. With these tools developers can, for example, remotely capture and download a picture from a compatible Olympus digital camera or convert DSS files from a compatible Olympus digital voice recorder to WAV."

The showcase section shows several companies that have rolled the SDK into full applications. And why arent these Open Source? Because the people at the company want to earn money to pay for their toys.

I care

[Kris_J]

And I'd really like someone to write a rehuff for my DC260 since jpegoptim shaves roughly 10% on average off the size of its photos. That's almost 20 extra shots I can fit on the current card with the current settings.

The Kodak DC range absolutely rock. Not only are they open with the OS, allowing 3rd party extensions, but they use a standard card and standard batteries. This means that they hold their value a lot better than other cameras with expensive batteries, less available cards or no way to update them for newer techniques or standards.

Re:Simple tests

[BitchKapoor]

"You can also use them to upload free Java games and applications, without paying $$$ to your provider."

Wait, you can run Java on LG VX-series (Verizon) phones? Do you have a link describing how to do that? I know that with T-Mobile Nokia phones, you can just download J2ME JARs over IR or bluetooth, but I didn't know there was a way to do it for the VX's.

OpenJTAG

[iPaqMan]

I am not an engineer but would it be possible to create an open source JTAG/Debugger? I know this is not a quick solution to the camera problem but it would open up embedded divices, no? Am I way off base?

Re:OpenJTAG

[gauthamg123]

Additionally, most chips contain propritary JTAG commands local to those chip types and known only to the manufacturer. Most of the emulation instructions are like this and require expensive NDAs to be signed before the company would release such information

Geek?

[suwain_2]

I couldn't find a single hint as to what main processor my camera uses

I'm the type of person that'll constantly go through and see what every single process on my box is. I built my own desktop. I disable things like Autorun on Windows. In short, I like knowing exactly what's happening behind the scenes on stuff I own.

But not once have I ever stopped to think about what's inside of my camera. It'd be kind of neat to see. But I have never tried to 'hack' my camera.

It's a fundamental enough piece of equipment. If my camera sucks, I'm going to return it and get one that doesn't. If I want images to look different than how the camera saves them, I'll fix them in Photoshop.

It has never crossed my mind to screw with the software on my camera. And I still wouldn't dream of it. It's a camera, not a desktop PC.

To each his own; if you want to try to get Linux running on your camera, go for it. But to the question posed, "Does Anyone Care?," I can't honestly say I do care what the internal hardware of my camera is. I care that it takes quality pictures, but that's all.

and you will have to desolder the flash

[oliverthered]

Can't you use a socket? or a a meatier flash that supports some debugging functions.
I can't believe that the electronics world is stuck in the stone age.

Re:and you will have to desolder the flash

[oliverthered]

You can clamp a surface mount,
can't you get flash chips that store a working version and a known good version and can overwrite the working version more or less instantly by setting a pin high.

photo naming

[statichead]

I just wish my camera would name my photos with something that means something to a human like me like a date stamp.

05-01-22.220059.tiff
05-01-22.220102.tiff
inst ead of MsomeMeaninglessNumber.tiff

If it were "open" I could control how this worked.

Re:photo naming

[moeffju]

Your files already have metadata associated with them, any transfer software or even any file manager should be able to mass-rename your files by date stamp. Of course, you might just as well use the file's date entry.

The [some string]_[number].[format] format is a standard, by the way. That's also the reason cameras have a directory name like DCIM on the medium, and the reason things like PTP or PictBridge work.

Re:photo naming

[statichead]

The files date string on my flash cards are all Jan 1 2002 not when I took the shot.

I know the meta data exists but I want to reduce the amount of post processing I need to do.

The [some string]_[number].[format] format may be a standard but it certainly does not mean anything to a human. Do I care that it is the nth picture I have taken +100023? The standard could have easily have been a date stamp if anyone would have actually thought about it. The nice thing about this is would be the chances of a duplicate file name would be greatly reduced provided there was seconds and fractions of seconds.

Maybe I am missing something but renaming based on the exact time I took the shot is not as easy as you make it out to be. You got me itching for a solution though.

Here is a meta data extraction tool. http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/
Unfortunatly my olympus 5050 does not seem to record the metadata for the time. WTF, it gives me everthing else

I'll have to do some more digging on this. This shit drives me batty.

thanks for the info and thoughts.

Re:photo naming

[moeffju]

Have a look at what EXIF data your camera provides and try jhead. It even has a batch-rename-by-capture-time option.

For the same reason

[ScrewMaster]

that Atheros and Broadcom are keeping the details of their Wi-Fi chipsets a secret. It's a combination of the usual corporate anti-competitive paranoia as well as a desire to milk the market by releasing firmware updates in dribbles and spurts. The last thing they want is some wiseass OSS type making their product do something way cool now that they had scheduled for release three years hence after they had finished sucking the last dollar out of their customer base. Or, for that matter, making their product do something completely unforeseen that they can't control. That attitude may (or may not) make good business sense, but it is certainly how you would expect the average corporate suit to behave. Deliberately giving up control and potentially giving your competition a leg up is something that most manufacturers have a really hard time doing, even when it is clearly to their benefit.

Re:OT: Your Sig

[Valar]

Well, most libertarians realize that there are somethings that _must_ be handled by government. One is regulation of interstate commerce (to prevent states from levying taxes on goods from other states). The other are 'community services' which include police, fire departments, garbage collection (no, not that garbage collection) and the military.

errata

[benedict]

The 20D has an 8MP sensor. The 300D has a 6MP sensor.

The price difference is a lot more than $300-$400. The Rebel is around $700, the 20D is around $1400.

Strip Photography

[FEEBLE*BMX]

If you open up the tools then creative people will come up with interesting ideas. Most consumer cameras do not have a mechanical shutter at all. The software just reads the CCD for a fraction of a second. With new software it would be easy to create strip photography effects where you exchange height x width for height x time. Basically stuff on the left side of the picture is taken at a different time than stuff on the right side. Objects in motion become distorted shapes but are not blurred. You can create a version of this effect with a scanner or photocopier. Put your hand on the scanning surface and move it around as it scans. Normally you would move the film during the exposure or modify the camera by adding a shutter with a slit cut in it which moves quickly from right to left. With a cheap consumer digital camera and custom software you could just have the camera capture the image from left to right in one pixel wide strips. Or capture a full image every MS and only write one strip of pixels per image, whatever. With software control you could do this in multiple patterns and speeds to create whatever effects you want.

Re:Ye of little imagination (Re:I would imagine...

[Kiryat Malachi]

Do the ghetto thing (like I did recently, actually) - set it to continuous shot, and just accept your 3 FPS movie. Speed it up to 6-10 FPS when you stitch the frames together, and it actually works pretty well.

Admittedly, it helps if you use a camera (like my D70) that writes continuously, rather than filling the buffer and then writing it out. I don't know if the 20D does the former or latter; hopefully the latter.

Digital Rebel 300D hacker, anyone seen him?

[infinii]

The WASIA hack for the 300D was amazing in that it enabled alot of crippled functionality available only on the 10D. However, after a few releases the guy who did the hack disappeared. Almost like the Canon Secret Service caught him and sent him to some prison in Siberia.

Does anyone know his whereabouts? I'm wondering if there is more available on the hacked 300D, I just read that a firmware upgrade on their top line 1DSMKII increased the buffer write speed significantly. Something similar for the Rebels would improve the biggest negative this camera has, buffer write speed.

DANGER: DON'T open your camera case

[thisisauniqueid]

Don't ever try to open a camera case, either out of curiosity or to fix it. No matter how careful you are, you're likely to get a massive shock from the flash unit that could kill you if it passed through the wrong part of your body. I have been fixing gadgets for years, and have had two massive shocks when I opened cameras to fix them.

Ritz Disposable Digital PV2 camera

[morcheeba]

I haxored my camera - it's the new version of the disposable digital camera I hacked last year. This version took more work, mainly because it uses an obscure processor & has a complicated banked-memory scheme (128K of code in 16K window). I've been able to modify the firmware so that I can use the standard windows driver for another camera with this one -- so we can get images off of it. I'm working on other mods - hopefully a "picture frame mode" and maybe a kite-camera timer. Other people are developing camera "skins".

my main PV2 camera page

Hm.

[StarKruzr]

Why is this so important to you?

It seems to me your procedure for picking a phone should be obvious - find whichever phone is rated highest in the departments that matter to you:

(guessing here)
a) Call quality
b) Battery life
c) Durability

Then ignore the other features of it, which will be somewhat limited anyway.

The reason the cell makers include these other extraneous things is because they're becoming incredibly inexpensive to include. It's not costing you much, so stop complaining!

Open cameras == bad business

[OhHellWithIt]

At least in the case of Kodak, "open" digital cameras are bad news. The company is fighting hard to avoid the loss of revenue as silver (film) imaging is replaced by digital imaging. With film, every photo you take means use of their product. With open digital cameras, you don't need them any longer unless you want silver prints -- and the last bit I saw on the quality and archivability of ink-based photo printers was that the gap is closing, if it hasn't been closed already. Therefore, it behooves them to integrate cameras as tightly as possible to ensure your photos continue to generate revenue. I don't think Kodak can go head-to-head with the likes of Sony and win on hardware alone.

Another consideration is that Kodak was built on making photography simple, with the Brownie box camera. Most photographers don't want to do anything more than point the camera and show the resulting picture to their friends and relatives. The more tightly integrated the product is, the easier it is for the customer (provided he has all the compatible stuff -- dock, Windows computer, etc.).

I don't say this by way of bad-mouthing Kodak. I am sure Fuji has the same considerations. As to why electronics companies make their cameras closed, I don't know.

Open firmware would enable a LOT of useful stuff.

[Myself]

(Quizzical look re the parent poster's ID?)

Anyway, an open firmware has done wonders for sales of the WRT54G and similar hardware, because people keep dreaming up uses that the manufacturer didn't think of, or couldn't be bothered to implement and support because of the relatively small market. Taken together, all the niche markets who love this gear make for quite a sizeable market.

If I could rewrite the firmware for my Olympus C2100UZ, I'd make it enumerate as a multi-endpoint USB device with the following functions:

• TWAIN image acquisition (duh.)
• VfW video source
• Mass-storage interface
• IrDA serial port
• NTSC video-out device
• RS232 port (it has one!)
• Microphone device
• Accelerometer (image stabilizer.)

Now, some uses. Parent poster pointed out quite a few. Many of which are already done by DigitaOS, a failed attempt at a camera API used in some obsolete models. (Pricey SDK killed it.)

Let me record audio, without taking a picture first, to use the camera for notetaking. Simply holding down a button while powering on the camera should put it in this mode. No need to initialize the CCD or wake up the stabilizer. Just open a file and dump audio into it.

My laptop doesn't have NTSC-out, but my camera does. I'm likely to have the camera with me while traveling, so using it as a generic video output device would be great. The bandwidth of the camera's USB 1.1 interface might allow for decently smooth video, but really all I want is generic presentation stuff. And with the built-in infrared transceiver, I could use any random remote control to flip pages from across the room.

As long as we're making up for laptop inadequacies and reducing the device count while traveling, let's use that IrDA interface to sync the ol' PDA. No need for another silly dongle in the laptop bag. You bet I'd enjoy open firmware. Oh, and the laptop has no built-in microphone. But the camera does! Convenient? No. Lifesaver in a pinch? Absolutely.

Did I mention that the C2100UZ has an RS232 port too? I could write an Axis-like feature set, leave the camera plugged into power and an external modem, and let it call me when it detects motion or hears a sound. Or I could dial in and poll for images. So what if I can't pan and tilt to make good use of the 10x zoom? Go to wide angle, I still have enough pixels to get useful detail out of a corner of the image. Show me the 300x300 pixel square where the motion was centered, for five consecutive frames. Send those first over the modem. Store the full images, and send them later if I'm interested.

Back in the DigitaOS days, someone wrote a program that would sit in the camera and log NMEA0183 GPS data coming in the serial port. I think this was before EXIF was standardized, but it was similar. A few years have passed, and this concept is largely forgotten. The world is ready for geolocated photography. I'd like to stick my Garmin on my Olympus. Open firmware would let me do just that.

The stabilizer has a lot of potential too. It's a small 2-axis accelerometer connected to a servo that moves a prism/lens around in the optical path. How about logging a stream of wiggle data along with a recorded video, so playback could be accompanied with force feedback in the viewers' seats? With the camera bolted to a vehicle chassis, a day at the races would be a much more engaging experience to relive years later. (Or force the relatives to sit through the "boring slideshow" of the vacation in Switzerland.. don't warn them about the skiing video!)

Okay, how about more "camera-like" functions? Parent poster touched on a few good ones. "Select some images to recompress" would be great. I'd also like to be able to keep my old images on the card, after copying them to the laptop, in case I want to show them to someone on the camera. They should be flagged as "disposable", and overwritten when new images come in, but in the meantime, leave them sitting where

oh, and

[hawk]

(I hit submit before I was done!)

Anyway, one of the reasons I insisted on a digital camera was that I was fed up with buying the 123A batteries that my IS-1 and my wife's camera ate. It seems to me that a pair of those, to the tune of $10, would last for about three 36 exposure rolls. Rechargables were mandatory.

And it seems to me that that dual AA type battery was only good for about twice as many picures as NiMH, whose capacity is ever increasing.

hawk

Feature control

[Vadim Makarov]

Why are digital camera manufacturers keeping the lid on the capabilities of their products

Because they want full control over the features they make available in a specific model. Many product lines have some features available only in more expensive top-of-the-line models, even though the implementation of the feature is purely software-based. This allows them to sell the more expensive models to more demanding customers and to professionals at a good profit.

One example are little things in SLR camera bodies that only professional photographers need, like MLU, leader out rewind, flash exposure compensation and the like. I remember a story when one local Canon service center started re-programming less expensive camera bodies with modified firmware that made it behave like a more expensive body (like Canon EOS A2, as far as I recall). They had to discontinue that offer at a request from Canon!

Another example are film scanner features, most notably multi-pass averaging. Again, the implementation is just a different firmware, but it allowed Nikon for example to sell LS-2000 scanners that have it enabled at twice as much price, comparing to the cheaper LS-30 model (granted, there was also a hardware difference in the number of digits the ADC had, I think, but that didn't stop a third-party PC software to implement almost as good multi-pass averaging with the LS-30).

Re:Open firmware would enable a LOT of useful stuf

[NaDrew]

Durnit, me without mod points.

Excellent, idea-rich post.

Outdated cameras don't make you an expert.

[fmaxwell]

I'm sure you've been very well trained to spit this argument out everytime someone mentions it, but it's still clear that you don't know what you are talking about.

What the f*** do you mean that I've "been very well trained"? I obviously know at least as much about photography, both digital and conventional, as you do. Does it make you feel like a real man to anonymously type out words on Slashdot that you'd be too cowardly to utter face-to-face in the real world?

Not everybody needs a digital SLR for the shit that they do. Additionally, some people decide to opt for a regular point and shoot camera when they realize exactly how complicated phototography can get.

If photography seems complicated for you, then you should stick with a point-and-shoot. I don't find it particularly complicated, but perhaps I've been at it longer than you or have applied myself more.

However, Digital Camera Backs have been available for years. Granted, these are in the larger format cameras but nevertheless, they are available.

Then that's not relevent to the consumer market, which is what we are discussing.

Also, high end (even the prosumer models) Canon and Nikon DSLRs derive some of their reputation for their longevity. Some photographers upgrade their gear every year. Others dont.

If you're shooting photos of political events for a newspaper, then there's little need to upgrade your DSLR. If you are shooting photos for "coffee table books," weddings, or portraits, most of today's digital SLRs are lacking. I can put ISO 100 film in my Nikon SLR and blow up the resultant print to sizes that are just not feasible with a prosumer DSLR

Also, there is NOT A SINGLE point and shoot camera on the market today better than my old Nikon D1 DSLR (About 3 Megapixels). Resolution is NOT everything in a camera.

Thanks for that insight, Ansel Adams. Color accuracy is important, too, and here's what Steve's Digiams had to say about the D1 SLR: We all know that the Nikon D1 is a great camera and we also know that it has been plagued since day one by magenta skin tones and other color irregularities. So is noise, and here's what dpreview said about the D1: The unfortunate thing about the D1's "type of noise" (banding vs. random) is that it's more difficult to remove, your eyes see a regular noise pattern more easily than random noise which is more like film grain. Speed is important, too, and your D1 is sadly lacking there, taking 1.3 to 1.4 seconds per picture.

But now I see where you are coming from: You've got big bucks (list price was over $5,000) invested in a four-year-old, outdated, 2.6 megapixel digital SLR and now you see that it's being outdone by new models that cost a fraction of what you spent. So you're trying to convince yourself that you made a wise decision by spending a princely sum to buy a first-generation digital SLR.

Any idiot can tell you that.

As you have just proven.

Another point where you are dead wrong is that "better film" hasn't been available for years. We're still using Fujichrome Velvia and Reala for most things. Been around for years. "Better film" isn't and won't be a reality anytime soon due to the nature of how film works.

Again, you don't know what you are talking about. Fujifilm introduced Velvia 100F (print) and Astia 100F (slide) in March of 2003. Just because you're using whatever film they have at the drug store doesn't mean that all film improvements have stopped.

And then there is the idiot comment about being able to upgrade the CMOS censors. First, not all censors are CMOS, and second, this is by no means a trivial process. AT ALL. Read up and understand how they work before blowing things out of your ass.

Talk about "blowing things out of your ass"! You are in way over your head. Sure, some cameras use CCDs and Foveon sensors, but CMOS is going to be the future of the d

Re:Ye of little imagination (Re:I would imagine...

[nuonguy]

(Too bad I cannot email you this in private...)

How do you stitch these frames together? I'm not a graphic artist type, so I guess I'll end up trolling the GIMP menus and plugins to find something that will allow me to stitch a bunch of pictures together into a movie. I'll try this when my new 2GB high-speed compact flash arrives. Maybe I can get something pretty at 800x600. The 20D is supposed to have good throughput to its storage.

John

Re:Ye of little imagination (Re:I would imagine...

[Kiryat Malachi]

Eh, that's okay. I don't want my email to be on Slashdot. You understand, I'm sure.

Part #1a: Use Photoshop actions (or GIMP equivalent) to batch resize the photos to the size you want the movie to be at. Make them GIFs, too.

Part #2a: Animated GIF: freeware called UnFREEz. Select them all, choose the frame delay, let it rip. Output is a large animated GIF file.

Part #1b: Photoshop actions to resize to the appropriate resolution.

Part #2b: Quicktime Pro, Import A Sequence of Images, save as a movie.

Enjoy the 20D.