Scalado introduces a zero shutter lag capturing experience for camera phones

[Simond]

Scalado, a world-leader in mobile imaging software solutions, will present its new technology innovation, The Scalado Camera Solution. This latest development from Scalado is the first to include both the Scalado Camera Engine and Scalado SpeedTags and will be demonstrated at the Image Sensor Summit in California, USA,

The Company's innovative solution for improving JPEG image handling performance by effectively managing the large files produced by high resolution images, enables zero-shutter lag, burst capturing and instant zoom/pan in the camera. A live demo board, developed in collaboration with Texas Instruments (TI), Symbian and OmniVision will be on display during the show, and a demo board movie can be seen here: http://www.scalado.com/products/camera-solution/

"Thanks to the new technology, manufacturers can now offer real-time viewing and capturing of high-resolution images, totally eliminating shutter lag. As a result, camera phone users can finally take memorable photos instead of missing the moment.”, says Sami Niemi CTO of Scalado.

With this new solution, photographers using a camera phone can instantly capture multi-megapixel images without any "shutter lag", thereby freezing the exact moment of capture. Until now, only advanced Digital Still Cameras (DSC) and Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras have thus far been capable of managing the delay between pressing the capturing button and actually saving the view finder image as the captured high resolution image.

As a result, 'shutter lag' has typically been one of the biggest technical challenges facing camera phones, especially when photographing moving objects. With Scalado's new 'zero shutter lag' feature, however, users can be sure that the image which they see in the viewfinder is the image that they capture. Users can then instantly zoom into the resulting JPEG images to review the details of the image in real-time.

[Simond]

By providing instant random access to the captured JPEG, the Scalado Camera Solution allows unprecedented JPEG handling performance, as well as faster image browsing in the photo gallery. The result is a mobile imaging solution that can provide up to 20 frames/second instant full-resolution image handling, instant zoom/pan at the moment the image is captured, and burst-mode image capture. As with shutter lag, fast burst-mode image capture – the rapid capture of multiple images - has until now been associated only with expensive, high-end cameras or expensive additional hardware processing.

"The combination of true creativity, enormous processing power, and jaw-dropping features in our latest software reinforces Scalado's status as experts and innovators who are focused on continuously enhancing the imaging experience." , says Fadi Abbas, VP Business development at Scalado.

The Scalado Camera Solution is based on two products: The SpeedTags IP and The Scalado Camera Engine. The SpeedTags IP is a minimal modification to the HW JPEG encoder that enables the encoder to produce modified JPEG images, referred to as SpeedTagged JPEGs.

Several camera sensors and camera modules for camera phones are already embedding the SpeedTags IP, such as sensors from both Aptina, OmniVision Samsung and MtekVision.

Download the Zero shutter lag Demo movie

[Keegan]

Thank god.... until this came along I was actually stuck using my phone primarily as a phone... it was terrible.

[Joachim]

Maybe the iPhone already does this? I have not noticed any shutter lag which is the main reason the iPhone camera is a lot better than any of my previous phone cameras (looking at you N73) despite being "only" 2MP.

The idea seems like a no-brainer. I mean.. capture what you already see on the screen, how hard was that?

As for sending MMS, big deal, I send out more pictures via email than I ever have sent MMS, and they are much better quality too.