Continuous burst mode digital camera

A method comprising:

• (a) capturing a sequence of at least twenty images in an image sensor at a capture and readout frame rate, wherein the image sensor outputs a frame of sensor data of at least five million sensor data values for each image in the sequence, and wherein the image sensor has a maximum sustained full-resolution image frame capture and readout rate (MSFRIFCRR) of at least three frames per second, wherein the capture and readout frame rate is at least the MSFRIFCRR rate;
• (b) using a digital imaging pipeline to perform image processing on each frame of sensor data at a rate at least equal to the MSFRIFCRR and outputting a frame of image processed pixel data corresponding to each frame of sensor data received, wherein the image processing includes color space conversion and zooming, and wherein the digital imaging pipeline zooms some data from each frame of sensor data before performing color space conversion on all of the data of each frame of sensor data;
• (c) receiving each frame of image processed pixel data into a JPEG compression mechanism, the JPEG compression mechanism performing JPEG compression at a rate at least equal to the MSFRIFCRR rate and outputting a frame of compressed image data for each frame of image processed pixel data received, the JPEG compression mechanism outputting a sequence of at least twenty frames of compressed image data wherein there is one frame of JPEG compressed image data for each of said at least twenty images captured by the image sensor;
• and
• (d) storing the sequence of at least twenty frames of JPEG compressed image data into nonvolatile storage at a rate at least equal to the MSFRIFCRR rate, wherein each frame of JPEG compressed image is stored in nonvolatile storage as a discrete file.

A digital camera,

• comprising:
• an image sensor having at least five million sensors, wherein the image sensor captures and outputs a sequence of at least twenty full-resolution frames
• of image data at a capture and readout rate of at least three frames per second;
• a random access memory (RAM) buffer memory;
• a pipeline of image processing engines that zooms some data of a frame of image data before performing color space conversion on all of the data of the frame of image data;
• a compression engine;
• and
• a nonvolatile storage device, wherein each frame of the sequence of full-resolution frames of image data passes into the RAM buffer, and passes from the RAM buffer, through the pipeline of image processing engines at an average rate of at least three frames per second, through the compression engine at an average rate of at least three frames per second, and is stored as a discrete file into the nonvolatile storage device, and wherein the discrete files associated with said at least twenty images are stored into the nonvolatile storage device at an average frame storage of at least three frames per second.

A digital camera having a continuous full-resolution burst capture mode, the digital camera comprising:

• an image sensor having at least five million sensors;
• a pipeline of image processing engines;
• a zoom engine;
• a compression engine;
• and
• a nonvolatile storage device, wherein in the continuous full-resolution burst capture mode:
• a sequence of at least twenty full-resolution images is captured by the image sensor, wherein each of the full-resolution images is image processed by the pipeline of image processing engines, is zoomed by the zoom engine, is compressed by the compression engine, and is stored into the nonvolatile storage device as a discrete file, wherein the zoom engine zooms some data of an image before the pipeline of image processing engines performs image processing on all of the data of the image, wherein the sequence of at least twenty full-resolution images is captured by the image sensor at a sustained frame rate of at least three frames per second, is image processed by the pipeline of image processing engines at the sustained frame rate of at least three frames per second, is zoomed by the zoom engine at the sustained frame rate of at least three frames per second, is compressed by the compression engine at the sustained frame rate of at least three frames per second, and wherein the discrete files are written into nonvolatile memory at the sustained rate of at least three files per second.