Stanford ’Frankencamera’ platform to be unveiled at graphics conference

A Stanford photography research group will distribute fully programmable open-source cameras to researchers, thanks to a federal grant. Marc Levoy, professor of computer science and of electrical engineering, holds a prototype of the open source, programmable Frankencamera. BY DAVID ORENSTEIN Stanford's open-source digital photography software platform, "Frankencamera," which allows users to create novel camera capabilities, is available as a free download for Nokia N900 "mobile computers" starting today. Next week at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, the Frankencamera engineering team will describe the platform and several sample apps created with it. "We're going public with Frankencamera," said Stanford computer science and electrical engineering professor Marc Levoy, who leads the project. "We are releasing code so that people can create new imaging applications on their Nokia N900s." In addition, the researchers have been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, shared with colleagues at MIT, to begin making professional-style, single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras, equipped with the software platform, for free distribution to computational photography professors around the country. Non-academics could buy the camera at cost.