I'm doing some prototyping with OpenCV for a hobby project involving processing of real time camera data. I wonder if it is worth the effort to reimplement this in C or C++ when I have it all figured out or if no significant performance boost can be expected. The program basically chains OpenCV functions, so the main part of the work should be done in native code anyway.
OpenCV used to utilize IPP, which is very fast. However, OpenCV 2.0 does not. You might customize your OpenCV using IPP, for example color conversion routines.
OpenCV performance in different languages