Oh wow, that is NICE!

Nokia already has a Panoramic app for Symbian cameras, i.e. the N86. The Maemo camera app is a nearly direct port, so seeing panoramic imaging appear here shouldn't be a far leap, and I expect to see it, to be honest. I wonder if Nokia will do it, and if so, how soon?

Panorama autostitch has been around forever for other manufacturers, Nokia's ******edly slow addition of it to the Symbian range is hopefully no indicator of how we'll wait on the N900. I really hope it comes soon as I consider this a basic feature now.

Regarding HDR photography - I've used the same setup as Doc Tran for ages too. Works OK for the most part, but a tripod is a must.

I don't know if this is technically possible (in terms of software), but the ideal solution for HDR photos would be to take all 3 photos in "1 pass".

What would need to be done for this is create a software (which I don't know if it viable) that "opens the shutter" for the maximum period of time of the highest exposure photo of the sequence, but that takes the "snapshots" of the lower exposure shots at the same pass.

Let's suppose we are taking 3 photos (theoretical times):
- 1/12s
- 1/6s
- 1/3s

We would have the following timeline:
0s: open shutter (light goes in the sensor, software starts "capturing process")
- 1/12s: take first snapshot (JPG image with 1/12s exposure. Shutter remains open)
- 1/6s: take second snapshot (JPG). Shutter remains open.
- 1/3s: last snapshot of the sequence. Save the third image and finish process.

I believe this is the best case for any HDR photo, but I wonder if the software/hardware combination is able to do this. Software can be limited to how you can use the camera driver, and hardware can limit us on how fast can you take the "snapshot" and save it while having to save the second and third snapshots in very near time.

Hope I made myself understood .

What do you think?

NZtechFreak, don't you rememer you and Mazor were the ones that schooled me on HDR a couple years back? I still see you as an imaging guru just for that deep lesson.

Don't suppose something like http://sourceforge.net/projects/panotools/files/ could be ported - at least to handle to photo stitching component?

Also, don't forget what was said on the image processing session on the summit - we should have more (image quality related) postprocessing options in the coming firmware updates, so you could choose between fast and HQ snapping - hopefully, if that part of the code will be open, we can plug in some HDR related functionality even if we don't get direct access to raw image data.

what would that help?

just decrease contrast from jpg and you get very closely the same result.

The big question is the bit depth of the original RAW. DSLRs have 10-12-14 bit pixel components which help a lot when going for HDR shots.

The main problem is that the physical hardware of the N900 is probably not capable of taking a single shot with high dynamic range, no matter what format you save it in. Either the bright areas get blown out or the shadows are impenetrable, or in the best case scenario (like the photo I posted above) a very small amount of the brights get blown out, and a very small amount of the shadows are impenetrable.