I’m working on an iPad/iPhone app that will interface with the Ricoh Theta camera. It’s being developed to aid people that have to capture data on film sets. The idea behind it is that even people without much technical knowledge would be able to operate it and be confident that they’ve captured everything that’s needed.
One of the things we need to capture is an HDRI. Right now we’re focussing on using the Theta Z1, and the ability of it to shoot bracketed exposures so quickly is amazing. But this is where it gets interesting.
Transferring the individual exposures over WiFi to the iPad takes quite a bit of time, even more so if we’d use DNG files (it takes too long). So when I discovered the HDRI plugin developed by Ricoh themselves (a colleague of mine developed the initial idea in the form of the Authydra plugin), I thought that it would be great if we could use that instead and do the processing on the Theta itself.
But then I quickly realized that I needed some extra ways of controlling the HDRI plugin from the iPad. And this is where my request comes in.
It would be wonderful if there was a way to build upon what Ricoh has created. So, then I thought, wouldn’t it be great if Ricoh could open source their plugins? Right now, my interest is only in the HDRI plugin, but why not make all plugins available? I think it would benefit this community a great deal, as they could serve as perfect examples to take ideas from and develop even more plugins. And in my case, I could add the few things I would need to the HDRI plugin, to make it suitable to control from our iPad app.
Also, while the source code for our app won’t be available, the app itself will be free on the App Store, once it’s released. So in that sense we would be giving back to the community as well.
I really hope the Ricoh will consider this as I think it could jumpstart plugin development quite a bit.
Thank you.
With regards,
Marijn Eken
