SLR style control over N900 camera
 

I am well aware the N900 could easily replace people's point and shoots during normal daily use(as evident here), but it's rare that I find a point and shoot with enough manual controls to make me happy. In this case, it's a moderately nice camera on an open source platform so something could easily(I hope) be whipped up.

What I wonder is if anyone else out there is interested in an app like this and if anyone would be willing to code one. I don't have the coding skills to pull it off or I would in a heartbeat ;) However I am a bit of a graphic designer and could easily build the interface images.

Anyone up for this before I submit it to brainstorm?

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

I'm for it... what I'd like to get out of it are RAWs and of course as much fiddling as it can be done :)

It won't replace my Oly E-520 but I want somethign I can have always with me to take pics. So far haven't seen a P&S I like that would offer RAWs.

Note I also do not code

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

Was wondering why do P&S camera don't allow RAW files?
Is it because of the processing power? Or the file size (RAW files are much bigger than jpeg's)?

Luckily, N900 doesn't lack in any of them. It has both the muscle and the space. So, I hope it is possible to shoot RAW with N900.

Can someone provide some insight into this.

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

Since RAWs are just the RAW take from the sensor and some extra metadata usually it would be the reverse... a JPEG requires more processing to generate. Though a RAW requires a higher datarate to store an image.

I think it's mostly that most people don't care enough for RAWs. I tend to shot in both RAW+JPEG(at max quality) if I like the JPEG I'll keep it if not I'll try playing with the RAW to see if I can get anything out of it.

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

Thanks for the support, of course if you use the Canon Hackers Development Kit(CHDK), any Canon point and shoot will shoot in 3 different formats of RAW ;)

Point and shoots don't provide RAW files because very simply put, the vast majority of end users would have no idea what to do with them. They require advanced editing software to convert them or even view them in some cases, they take forever to write to the memory card, and they take up a lot of space. For the person who does *not* care about editing, raws are very nearly pointless.

Quite right, RAW image files are after one curve and one levels have been applied, typically JPEGs have had 2 sets applied and therefore become more faulty to edit. RAWs also have non lossy or no compression at all. Making them the premier archival format.

On occasion I shoot professionally using Pentax DSLRs and I always, always, ALWAYS, shoot in RAW and convert to JPEG or TIFF later. I have probably close to 100gbs of RAW images saved on my external for safe keeping.

Now to make a long story short, with the right codec, which should easily be obtained for something like Adobe's DNG format, it should be a simple matter of saving the RAW image info to it.

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

I wouldn't want DNG(never cared much for adobe). But something like tiff or the like or any other lossless format will be good enough for me. And of course more or less unprocessed ;)

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

TIFF wouldn't be a bad idea, but Adobe has promised to forever support the DNG format(thusly why they call it the Digital Negative format) And has thusly become a popular format supported widely by both cameras and photo editing software.

Also TIFF is completely uncompressed, DNG allows for lossless compression meaning a much smaller file with the same image editing options.

Personally I'm looking less for RAW features though and more for things like manual aperture control, manual shutter speed control, manual ISO control, manual white balance.. You get the idea, also it would be cool to apply custom made curves from photoshop in real time so you can see what the picture will look like before you take them. And apply the curve as the 2nd curve used for JPEG conversion from RAW. That'd be cool. Though we'll see what's actually in demand if any of it. :)

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

Well it can probably support both so not an issue really. I would expect it to support things outside of specific vendor domains.

But yeah all the other stuff would be nice to have as well. I completly forget about that since I rarely fiddle with those. Well other than shutter and aperture.

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

While I agree RAW would be great, I don't think we'll get manual control. I believe all camera phones have fixed apertures, focal lengths, and shutter speeds, generally around 4.7mm and f2.8. The only variable are the glass elements movement for the Auto Focus and ISO for different lighting conditions.

Though...I would love to see maybe a scroll bar, or a ring on the side of the screen to control focus distance.

Re: SLR style control over N900 camera
 

Shows what I know about camera phones :rolleyes:

Well at least curves and RAW would be do-able. I love the idea of a slider for manual focus, if we could do that in live video too, that would be really handy. With an aperture of 2.8 we could get some neat effects with a manual focus slider in vids. And of course the live curves levels applied in real time to the vid as well. :D