Patent ID: 7414650

Claim:
A digital camera for capturing an image comprising: an image sensor; a capture trigger; a capture buffer configured as a first memory location comprising a plurality of buffer locations, each of which is available for storing auxiliary image frames; a second memory location separate from the capture buffer, the second memory location configured to store image frames, wherein each image frame corresponds to an associated auxiliary image frame; a processing system configured to continuously receive and process the auxiliary image frames during auxiliary mode of the digital camera and before the capture trigger is activated, to store the auxiliary frames in the first memory location, to detect activation of the capture trigger and receive a corresponding image frame from the image sensor, to store the corresponding image frame in an available buffer location of the second memory location, to perform image processing on the corresponding image frame, to designate the available buffer location in which the corresponding image frame is stored as unavailable for image storage until the image processing is complete, and to copy one or more auxiliary image frames and corresponding image frames to a fixed section of memory for performing image processing on the copied image frames.