Stanford open-source camera may revolutionize camera market

Stanford researchers are working an open-source camera, a new concept that gives photographers a lot more freedom than traditional digital SLR cameras. The so-called "Frankencamera" platform gives nearly full control over the features of your camera and enables you to add new features by downloading applications from the Internet. More info at HotHardware.

Some of the features that could be enabled by an open source camera include high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities, video enhancement with still photos, and web interaction. Although we’ve seen the beginnings of some HDR features in cameras today, for the most part, HDR is left to post-processing. The process of HDR imaging is to capture pictures of the same scene with different exposures and then to combine the images into a single composite image with each pixel optimally lit.

Researchers have also considered the possibility of enhancing the resolution of videos using high-resolution still photographs. It’s possible that a camera could capture low-resolution video at 30 frames per second and also capture high-resolution still images periodically. The extra information from the still image could then be recombined with the video. Now that would be pretty cool.