After installing uv4l as instructed here : http://www.linux-projects.org/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=14
I managed to get pictures using dd as the same page suggests : dd if=/dev/video0 of=snapshot.jpeg bs=11M count=1
However all pictures were 640X480. I found the configuration file and set it to the maximum (2592X1944) and also set fps to 10 down from 30 (i'm only interested in pictures, not video, and wanted to make sure 30fps wouldn't limit the resolution). I found the maximum supported resolution here : http://www.raspberrypi.org/new-camera-mode-released/
However after doing that, images went up to 1920X1080 but no higher, is there anything i can do or is this a limitation of uv4l? If it is, is there an API i could use to directly interact with the camera?