Notices

BTW anybody found a way to painlessly remove the stylish chrome imitating plastic part that only helps reflecting the flash into the sensor ? (the cam covering slider is not helping either, but at least it serves a purpose )

the n900 will never have "slr style control" for one big reason- it's not an slr. i hear this often, and it appears you may be associating the typically manual control of a camera, with it being slr. slr stands for single-lens-reflex, meaning only that when you look through the camera viewfinder, the picture/light you see is coming through the lens... the n900, or any mobile phone for that matter is not an slr, and never will be. if you want manual control of the shutter speed, aperature, exposure, that is a different issue completely...

slrs are typically mechanical cameras. mechanical shutters, mechanical lens/glass, and for 35mm slr cameras, mechanical film advance... i associate the quick-reponsivness, and large body with an slr... both characteristics of an slr (and hopefully responsiveness of the n900 too)

hope that helps some

I completely agree with what you said.
Having said that the OP is just asking for SLR STYLED control and NOT SLR quality pics. With control, he probably meant the menu navigation and stuff.

Well that picture is from the famous Dr. Ari Jaaksi, but from the comments on Flickr (click the picture in my post to go to the photo page), people weren't exactly sure why that effect was happening.

Black Sharpie marker?

As I specifically said I only want manual control, so far as I've found out, most of which is impossible. Yes I realize SLR stands for the *build* of the camera, just as Micro Four Thirds is the sensor type since they can't really say Single Lens Reflex minus the reflex (lol), but I used SLR since it's something a great many people are used to, and understand the type of controls I was looking for.(Guess I should have said 'Advanced Camera Control for N900 instead )

In any case I don't want higher quality pics, or larger more complex files(though some do), just more control then we already have. A geek's control, if you will.

Apply curves and levels in real time, adjust focus manually (to what minimal effect it may have) if it was possible I really wanted control of the aperture and shutter speed, though it seems like that one is just a pipe dream till someone like Sammy joins forces with Nokia for a Maemo powered *phonecamera.* (Which would be epic)

Anyways, before I get to far ahead of myself, perhaps what we should detail ITT is the abilities we *could* add to the N900's camera through an app.

Raw functionality *is* doable. Yes 600mhz is definitely enough to save a Raw image from the camera sensor assuming we actually have access to the raw image data that the camera takes.

Curves and Levels run along the same lines, definitely do able IF we have access to the raw data.

Manual focus is also doable(though possible less useful then initially thought), and I should hope much easier to impliment then the first 3.

Focus tracking is along the same lines, doable but possibly pointless.

ISO control should also be easy. (even though I'd pretty much have it locked on the lowest it can go )

Custom Timer is doable easily.

Remote/Remote Timer through bluetooth with devices like the WiiMote. (OR *maybe* an IR remote though I'm uncertain if the IR sensor can receive since the manual says it's not IrDA compatible also with the IR port on the top and not the back it would be difficult if you're taking a pic of yourself)

Panorama merging could also be doable though one of the very nice little open source linux programs out there.(read: Hugin) Of course the processing power required to run this might bog down the whole device for a matter of hours depending on how many images were used.

Custom White Balance should also be doable preferably with access to the RAW camera data.

AE-L(Auto Exposure Lock) Locks the exposure at the area you're pointing the camera in so you can easily auto expose for your subject then recompose the shot with the proper exposure.

EV+/- (Exposure Variation) Deffinately doable even if only a cheap trick would still help give a little more control over how the picture turns out.

Exposure Bracketing should also be quite easy to do along the same lines as EV+/-

Setting shutter speeds for LONG exposures may or may not be possible since the N900 uses a rolling shutter and I'm not sure how that would effect longer exposures or if they're even possible.

Flash syncing like Slow Sync, Trailing Curtain Sync, Strobe Sync, etc, should be easy if long exposures are possible since you only have a time delay/repeat on the flash of a long shutter.

Automatic pictures taken at regular intervals for showing the growth of a flower blossom over a day or the traffic patterns outside your office, etc. Should be the easiest of the bunch to code in.

The ability to add custom meta data on to pictures while their taken. Should be easy to implement.

And last but not least shooting speeds. Likely slow as many of the current market point and shoot's have about 1.5/second.(Given those are 12mp images from a bigger sensor and have a dedicated camera processor that I doubt could be clocked at as much as 600mhz...) Of course as resolution is reduced higher speeds should be possible.

Anyone else care to add anything? OR prove something on this list can't work?

Megahertzes mean nothing in this context. A specialized DSP/FPGA found in a midrange DSLR can easily outperform even a multi-gigahertz multi-core desktop processor at specific tasks. There was actually some talk about this at the summit - it was told the current time required to capture an image is a balance - if you would wait 10 minutes for an image, you would a lot better looking images. If you want quicker capture, quality will suffer.

I think this thread should be merged with
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33016
(Maemo and Computational Photography)
and
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33007
(HDR Pictures with the N900)

true but the OMAP3430 is, so maybe there is some piece of software missing instead of hardware. this needs further investigation and maybe nokia can help on that with hardware infos

http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtb...emplateId=6123

I found that out when researching the OMAP4440's a couple weeks ago. I wondered if that might be the case, but if you notice, the FM radio is provided just not active with any software and in the manual it says so. It actually invites you to write your own code for it, but in the case of the IR port is simply says it's not IrDA compatible. Leading me to believe the port can only send IR signal not receive OR the hardware is not fast enough to receive an IrDA signal.

Exposure Bracketing is the thing that i most want so we can make some lovely HDR shots