Android 4.4 Kit Kat introduced the ImageReader class for accessing the image in the Surface, useful for real-time processing of a camera preview. However, I can't figure out how to link it to the Surface or use it. Anybody have any insights or short example code?
You can find an example in the camera CTS tests.
As noted in the comments, ImageReader isn't actually usable until 5.0 ("Lollipop").