Kids front and center
Do you know how to take a decent photograph of your kids? Sony, apparently, thinks not, which is why it has just introduced a Cyber-shot camera with something it calls “Child Priority Mode.”
The DSC-T300 (10.1 megapixels, 5x optical zoom) is capable of picking out any kids in the frame and automatically shooting a snap off when they smile. Any adults involved can look like death warmed over for all Sony cares, as long as they pay for the wretched thing and are happy to be ignored by the smart snapper.
From (the newly reformatted) Japan Today, March 24, 2008
http://www.japantoday.com/category/new-products/view/kids-front-and-center
Now how does this thing work? Are there other priority modes? What kinds of priority modes would you like for your camera?
According to Sony's description of the feature (found by following the link on Japan Times), it's "just" improved facial recognition software and for whatever reason, JT decided to put a hyperbolic spin on it. I don't think much of the child priority mode (and Sony's before and after photos of its benefits look pretty fake to me), but I guess it's a cute idea and definitely makes for good marketing.
ReplyDeleteSo what comes next, facial recognition for pets? Or maybe you could train a camera to recognize any specific expression, you know, so you could get that perfect look on every self-portrait you put on myspace.
I personally want a camera manufacturer to go into a "more dynamic range instead of more useless pixels" priority mode. Spending less time on gimmicks would be a good start. Oh, and better bracketing options for compacts would be nice too: having rely on hacked firmware for basic tools is just ridiculous.
Thanks for your technical spin on the camera. But "just" doesn't seem an appropriate term here. This kind of technology was science fiction only a few years ago. Maybe people take this kind of stuff for granted now. When I was a kid we used to make pin-hole cameras out of oatmeal boxes... and that was pretty cool back then.
ReplyDelete