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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-09-2012, 07:52 PM
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JPEG uses lossy "perceptually compressed" encoding, which makes it bad for reprocessing. That said, raw files are supposed to be unprocessed data as digitized off the sensor (even including some edge pixels that are not exposed but help to determine black point and noise characteristics). What you want is something not raw, but using lossless compression at the camera-rescaled resolution; perhaps PNG files? I agree that would be nice.
As for my PC being too slow, well, I'm the professor who built the world's first Linux cluster supercomputer in 1994. My group at the University of Kentucky operates two machine rooms full of cluster supercomputers for our research. That said, yup, they're too slow for some of the computational photography research I've been doing lately. I have individual algorithms that run for a month on a 1MP image. ;) That's what research is all about -- pushing boundaries. It will only be a few years before an improved algorithm does the same stuff quickly at full resolution on a GPU-augmented cell phone... or inside your camera. :)
Actually, it's not the buffer management that sucks, it's the flash write speed and a smallish total RAM size. That's getting better too. Last year, DDR3 prices fell through the floor. In addition, the flooding bumped disk drive prices 2X-3X, which has given the SSD market quite a boost, so flash memory price/performance should be improving quickly soon. Be patient. Digital cameras are a very young technology that is still evolving. In the meantime, it's good research for me. :)
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