NIOS II vs 100% hardware implementation

Thanks for the informative responses; this is very helpfull to me since I'm new to programmable logic.

@BadOmen

I definately see your point. As a software engineer I've always liked using divide-and-conquer methods (e.g. writing small, but very manageable functions). :-)

@Pilipala

The resolution is not too huge, just 320x240 pixels. The kind of 'camera' I'm using is a bolometer which is connected to an ADC (it has no ADC backend integrated). So in regard to the interface it hasn't been too troublesome to write the driver in VHDL.