And just think what they could do if they didn't have to reverse-engineer the Canon functions!

HINT HINT Nikon!

PBriddo - I'd agree, except that Apple's culture doesn't lend itself to partnership. I think the compact camera technology is fairly comoditized anyway. I only prefer Cannons because the UI is the most similar to my Nikon's (which is weird) and I like that they run off of AA batteries (The A series). Of course if Jobs makes a camera its only going to have one button (lets hope its the shutter) and that's going to irritate me.

Soap - I've read about that, and its exactly what I mean. I didn't realize it did focus bracketing. I've been kicking around putting it on my little A-Series (550 I think). Now I guess I have to.

If only Nikon made a cellphone :^) Now that would be cool !

Have you see CHDK, Willis?
It's the Rockbox of camera firmwares.
It can do about everything from the simple addition of RAW support to focus bracketing.

Those are some great ideas, sounds like they would be right in Apple's powerhouse of what they do. Leave it up to them to get innovative, but let the camera tech reside with a manufacturer that already has lots of experience in the field of photography.

Well the touch screen ship has already sailed... But I know what you mean. I'm a Mac guy and I still find those commercials irritating.

What I really want somebody to make is a completely open camera platform. There's so much amazing hardware out there, but the software lags woefully behind (a consistent theme in Japan... not sure why). It needs to be networked in some fashion (Preferably WiFi). Then just turn Dev's loose to do their thing.

Its a decidedly consumer based approach. It would make a lot more sense in a compact than a SLR, but for crying out loud. If I could edit my photos in the field as easily as I can on my phone... I'd be making some pretty incredible stuff.

Hopefully never. I don't want to see a white camera with ear buds, touch screen, and more ads featuring Justin Long making fun of poorly portrayed facsimilies of Nikon and Canon CEOs.

Anyone seen a break-down of what processor(s) are on a DSLR (not the silly brand names and stamped lettering - the actual cores)?

I'm assuming a DSP core for the bulk of the image work between the ADC and the storage card, and a low-speed ARM-core for the menus and misc functions. This theory is supported (as such) by the dual-firmwares that Nikons run.

IF IF IF that is the case the iPhone is in a whole other league. Compare the sub 100 Mhz ARM core I would expect as the general-purpose CPU with the Nikon DSLRs with the monster (by comparison) general-purpose CPU in the iPhone.

EDIT: Canon SD980 runs a ARM 946E-S, so we're talking 166mhz, and no floating point math unless it is paired with the VFP9-s coprocessor (didn't look that close at the CHDK dumps to see if it is). Still greatly outleagued by an iPhone. Barely more power than a pre-Classic iPod.
They do this for power consumption reasons, and cost.

And while the chips used in a compact are no guarantee of what is in a DSLR, the processing demands are quite similar and I would expect chips to be in the same ballpark.

NSX - I've got it. It's the "Best Camera" app I referenced in my original post. I'm amazed at the quality and speed of photo editing on my phone.

What's weird is that Nikon has had in-camera photo processing for years, and so have all the other guys. But the implementation was so terrible that it isn't good for anything. Truth be told, it wasn't even Apple that got it right. It was the third party developers. Hopefully Nikon or one of the other guys will finally figure out that we need open camera's with a robust SDK. All of my iPhone camera apps cost me a combined $10. That's less than what you would pay in sales tax for a student edition of photo shop.

Imagine if you could do all of your systematic post processing to a single image in camera, and then your camera would automatically apply those adjustments to the rest of your shots (non-destructively of course). You'd be able to see a pretty close approximation of your final result in-camera as you shoot. How cool would that be?

You should look at this app then by Chase Jarvis.

http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/09/best-camera-iphone-app-book-community.html

Guilty Niko... But if you could see the full resolution version, you'd see that the time on the clock is about 6:30 or so. Once you hit the 12 hour day your intrerweb usage gets unimpeachable.

As for the quick take... I'm told it had it's fans kind if like the newton did. It was just before it's time. I do think that the current platforms would benefit tremendously from an open sandboxed development platform like the iphonne's

The Sony HX1 has an auto panorama mode that I love using all the time.

WOW, I need to try that app!

Apple did make a digital camera. It was a complete and utter failure! I used one back in the day. If it had been as successful as the iphone then we would be talking about how to make the next Apple DSLR even better!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake

Hey Willis, does your boss know you sit around and read Engagdet and make iphone panoramas of your cubicle all day? I like how you have your spread sheet open in the background while your "goofing" around :^)

Oh I'd I always imagined you taller, LOL j/k :^)

If Apple wrote the Menu interface for Nikon that would be a great start!

My iphone never ceases to amaze me. I just pulled up the app store for a quick break and it recommends this program "Auto-Stitch". Auto Stitch does exactly what it says... stitches together photos in your iphone to make one big composite image.

So I fire off a few shots (no tripod, as you can see in the less than flattering reflection), open the program, choose the pictures, and it goes to work. 20 seconds later I have a nice composite that it lets me crop into a panorama. I didn't even make an attempt to hold it steady or maintain the same distance to subject.

If I'd wanted to, I could have also run noise removal ("Noise Blaster") and done a few color corrections ("Best Camera"), but I've got to get back to work. When I was done, I launched the Flickr app and its out on the web. Start to finish took less time than it took for me to write these two paragraphs (and I'm a pretty fast typist).

Check out the results:

If my iPhone camera were any good, I'd leave my nikons at home!