Live data from Hacker News

Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

github.com

41–50 of 64 posts

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#41

Sounds like a fun project. Honest question: why would one switch from a much more capable "carry everywhere" smartphone camera to this? Especially since phone is truly carry always & everywhere and that computational processing squeezes out insane amount of photo quality from already excellent phone cameras.

Photos aren't only about quality, especially there days where it's popular to use lower resolution cameras, with worse optics. Specifically for portraits, it's common to use diffusion filters that reduce a bit details/contrast or do that in editing so you don't see every little "defect" on someone's skin.

Some people specifically want something other than their phones because they don't want to always have their phone or use it all the time, others want better controls or a different experience.

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#42
post #3

It's a shame that, being based on a full-blown Linux SBPC, it has an absolutely unacceptable boot time for a camera. 22 seconds. I can have my iPhone camera out and ready to capture an ephemeral moment of child's play in under 3 seconds, most commercial cameras boot in seconds as well. A film camera can be ready to go the second the lens cap is off. 22 seconds is an eternity in the world of photography. It's a shame…

There have been attempts to make the Pi boot faster (by disabling the initialization of various subsystems), e.g.:

https://github.com/IronOxidizer/instant-pi

https://himeshp.blogspot.com/2018/08/fast-boot-with-raspberr...

https://kittenlabs.de/blog/2024/09/01/extreme-pi-boot-optimi... (previously featured here too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41420597)

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#43
post #3

It's a shame that, being based on a full-blown Linux SBPC, it has an absolutely unacceptable boot time for a camera. 22 seconds. I can have my iPhone camera out and ready to capture an ephemeral moment of child's play in under 3 seconds, most commercial cameras boot in seconds as well. A film camera can be ready to go the second the lens cap is off. 22 seconds is an eternity in the world of photography. It's a shame…

Things lost to time: The Minolta Dimage A1 had contacts for detecting when gripped, so it could ready itself without any button pressed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minolta_Dimage_A1 (You see it in the pic, but its not described in the article).

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#44
post #7
post #3

It's a shame that, being based on a full-blown Linux SBPC, it has an absolutely unacceptable boot time for a camera. 22 seconds. I can have my iPhone camera out and ready to capture an ephemeral moment of child's play in under 3 seconds, most commercial cameras boot in seconds as well. A film camera can be ready to go the second the lens cap is off. 22 seconds is an eternity in the world of photography. It's a shame…

It's unfair to compare an idling deep sleep device with a cold boot. However, there is a shortcut: Just don't boot a full OS (thinking of custom firmware which boots in fractions of seconds, standard in the Microcontroller world). Or boot an optimized Linux user space. I am confident with a bit fiddling one can bring down a standard SBC Linux to a few seconds from cold to ready.

>It's unfair to compare an idling deep sleep device with a cold boot.

Sure. My Fuji X100 is ready to shoot in about a second after a battery swap.

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#45
This is very cool, it would be huge if this camera could go on fields "traditional cameras" didn't go in, and iphones cannot give. Like an inbetween both where you can add an objective, and send photos to your phone via BLE or something. This would allow for a "professional camera" where you can edit your photos you just took

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#47

No disrespect to the project here, of course, but I'm wondering why there's no truly high-quality camera for Pis. I have the so-called "high-quality camera" and it still blows. I use it to monitor my 3-D printer with OctoPi, and that's about what it's good for.

> No disrespect to the project here, of course, but I'm wondering why there's no truly high-quality camera for Pis.

Not Pi specific on the camera interface ribbon cable, no, but most any raspberry pi 3b or 4 will work with almost any 'high end, high quality' USB webcam type camera for still image capture using all the same software tools that exist for any debian-based CLI environment.

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#48
post #25
post #3

It's a shame that, being based on a full-blown Linux SBPC, it has an absolutely unacceptable boot time for a camera. 22 seconds. I can have my iPhone camera out and ready to capture an ephemeral moment of child's play in under 3 seconds, most commercial cameras boot in seconds as well. A film camera can be ready to go the second the lens cap is off. 22 seconds is an eternity in the world of photography. It's a shame…

The early Sony Alpha A7 cameras run Android (really: you could jailbreak and write your own PlayMemories apps) https://github.com/ma1co/sony-pmca-re https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/59226/does-the-son... So there must have been a way to do this at that time. (I suspect a simpler subsystem does initial boot response). I did contemplate building something around one of the Arducam modules and an RP2350.

> So there must have been a way to do this at that time. (I suspect a simpler subsystem does initial boot response).

They heavily use suspend-to-flash.

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Functional comparisons among devices within a category are always fair. Pointing out a device’s perceived shortcomings is not an attack on the people that made it. One crucial role designers play (ideally) in product development is seeking out honest feedback, filtering it, and figuring out if that feedback can help make the product better for end users. The FOSS landscape needs a lot more of that.

> Functional comparisons among devices within a category are always fair When they have the same prerequisites, yes. But then you need to count in the time the iPhone needs to boot as well, which will probably mean you are at a similar range.

Ok, now read the other three sentences that explain why I said that.

Re: Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components

#50
post #3

It's a shame that, being based on a full-blown Linux SBPC, it has an absolutely unacceptable boot time for a camera. 22 seconds. I can have my iPhone camera out and ready to capture an ephemeral moment of child's play in under 3 seconds, most commercial cameras boot in seconds as well. A film camera can be ready to go the second the lens cap is off. 22 seconds is an eternity in the world of photography. It's a shame…

I agree with the premise but that's a bad comparison. If you have your iphone off, do you get to the camera in 3 seconds as well, after booting?
Post reply on HN