Face Recognition - is it useful?

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 20:14:28 -0800, Little Juice Coupe wrote
(in article ):

I thought it only adjusted contrast, saturation, etc. for the best portrait
picture and otherwise had not other effect?


The one on my Nikon Coolpix 7900 will work with up to three faces in a
picture. When you depress the shutter half way it chooses the closest one and
surrounds it with a red square in the LCD. It adjusts focus and exposure for
that face. I had forgotten that the camera had that feature when I wrote my
other post on this thread, which shows you how often I use it for portraits.
No doubt there have been improvements in face recognition software since the
7900 was introduced.

Anyway, it does work quite well on faces up from full face to 3/4.

John McWilliams wrote:
timeOday wrote:
Bill Tuthill wrote:
There is a 15-30 minute Kodak advertisement on Youtube.com
currently going the rounds. I found it extremely boring
so I'm not going to dignify it with a URL.

One of the things the video touted was face recognition software.
Fuji has this in the F30 upgrade (can't remember model number)
so it must be in other digital cameras.

Has anybody seen, or can anyone offer, comparisons of portraits
with and without the feature enabled?


Sounds good to me. Faces are the subject of many a photo, so why not
set the focal length and exposure to get them right? (Is that what
they do?) I know how to use my manual controls, but I'm not above
using auto when it suffices.

My impression is that face recognition was more important in setting
auto focus, then exposure, but I doubt it zooms the damn lens.


You have obviously never used a Minolta 7xi with a power zoom lens. Took
me some time to find out how to stop it from zooming to some arbitrary
focal length every time I woke it up.

timeOday wrote:

Sounds good to me. Faces are the subject of many a photo, so why not
set the focal length and exposure to get them right? (Is that what they
do?) I know how to use my manual controls, but I'm not above using auto
when it suffices.

Agreed. Since posting, I discovered that many Nikon digicams have it also.
However I could not find any "with and without" samples.

Mike Russell -move wrote:
...
Next option up butt recognition. For those pain full moments when pulling
the proper exposure out of your yazoo is more than you can manage.

LOL - and watch it spin its wheels figuring out which end of Rush Limbaugh
is which.

Or with Nikon face recognition software, up to three buttheads at a time!
Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity.

And lo, C J Campbell emerged from the ether
and spake thus:
On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 09:09:44 -0800, Bill Tuthill wrote
(in article ):

There is a 15-30 minute Kodak advertisement on Youtube.com
currently going the rounds. I found it extremely boring
so I'm not going to dignify it with a URL.

One of the things the video touted was face recognition software.
Fuji has this in the F30 upgrade (can't remember model number)
so it must be in other digital cameras.

Has anybody seen, or can anyone offer, comparisons of portraits
with and without the feature enabled?


Small point&shoots sometimes have this feature. It works. It is useful when
taking a picture of some scenic area or landmark and you have a person facing
the camera at one side of the picture. You know, the standard tourist photo.
The camera focuses on the face and adjusts exposure for it. Some Nikon
Coolpix cameras have it, I believe. It would be difficult, but not
impossible, to implement in a DSLR.

I have a Coolpix S6, which has this feature, and it sucks. It's very
slow to pick up a face and not terribly reliable. Plus, if you know
what you're doing, you can lock focus on someone's face and turn the
camera. The feature is designed for people who aim the camera directly
between their friends' heads and wind up with blurry friends and a
nice crisp background.

Quite to the contrary, the Canon Powershot SD800 has a fast and almost
*creepily* accurate face-finder. It also marks the images as
"portraits" when it sees a face in them and you can sort them that way
within the camera's interface. How novel.

I regret buying the S6 even with its huge screen and built-in WiFi.
The SD800, at perhaps $200 more, is worth every penny of that.

--
Aaron
http://www.fisheyegallery.com
http://www.singleservingphoto.com

"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message
...
There is a 15-30 minute Kodak advertisement on Youtube.com
currently going the rounds. I found it extremely boring
so I'm not going to dignify it with a URL.

One of the things the video touted was face recognition software.
Fuji has this in the F30 upgrade (can't remember model number)
so it must be in other digital cameras.

Has anybody seen, or can anyone offer, comparisons of portraits
with and without the feature enabled?

Presumably it's designed to fix the problems due to P&S cameras having an AF
area that's (a) way too large and (b) looks for something contrasty.

The result of that combination is that many P&S cameras will focus on the
background and not the subject, if there's something contrasty in the
background. Which gets old really really fast.

I don't know how well it works, though.

DSLR AF sensors are a lot smaller, so it's not so much of a problem.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David J. Littleboy wrote:

Presumably it's designed to fix the problems due to P&S cameras having an AF
area that's (a) way too large and (b) looks for something contrasty.

The result of that combination is that many P&S cameras will focus on the
background and not the subject, if there's something contrasty in the
background. Which gets old really really fast.

I don't know how well it works, though.
DSLR AF sensors are a lot smaller, so it's not so much of a problem.

Yeah, from Nikon's marketing information, it looks like the focus point
(actually up to 3 points) could be anywhere in the frame.

Many film P&S cameras are very usable for autofocus because their
multi AF points are inscribed in the viewfinder, albeit not as accurately
as in a SLR, but close enough to work. Point, half-press, recompose
works as with an SLR.

Why can't digicams do that? Maybe some of them do. Various P&S digicams
I've used, especially Canon, take a long time to autofocus and are not
particularly good at picking a focus point.

Greetings Bill,

Actually, the technology is pretty sophisticated and offers limitless
options.

Kodak's e-moment technology, has an intelligent system where pictures have
the ability to automatically recognize each other. So, without human
instruction, a picture will use its metadata to find another picture with
related data, and assemble into new groups based on how they relate to one
another. For example, imagine being able to access every picture ever taken
of your son or daughter at Christmas, whether it's part of your collection
or those of relatives and friends. This will apply to not only new pictures
but any pictures you have digitized. It far more than just a face
recognition option in a camera.

Kodak's e-finder technology, another innovation is a feature where all
digital content is automatically given a unique identity, enabling users to
instantly access any image or information they wish anytime, anywhere. This
intelligent content technology would again take metadata tagging to the next
level by enabling organization of pictures based on GPS location, automatic
scene classification (beach, birthday party, etc.), decade mapping, and
include the noted face recognition technology and more.

Another element of the future services, is Kodak Perfect Touch Technology,
that will automatically detect and fix, before the user knows it, common
photographic flaws such as under-lit pictures, high contrast scenes,
back-lit shadows and red-eye in both still and motion images. You will
simply enjoy your picture taking more.

As to the ad, I am surprised that you found it boring? I thought it was
pretty good. By the way, it was only 3.41 minutes long. Maybe you saw
something else?

Ron Baird
Eastman Kodak Company



"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message
...
There is a 15-30 minute Kodak advertisement on Youtube.com
currently going the rounds. I found it extremely boring
so I'm not going to dignify it with a URL.

One of the things the video touted was face recognition software.
Fuji has this in the F30 upgrade (can't remember model number)
so it must be in other digital cameras.

Has anybody seen, or can anyone offer, comparisons of portraits
with and without the feature enabled?

Ron Baird wrote:
Greetings Bill, ...
Kodak's e-moment technology, has an intelligent system where pictures have
the ability to automatically recognize each other. So, without human
instruction, a picture will use its metadata to find another picture with
related data, and assemble into new groups based on how they relate to one
another. For example, imagine being able to access every picture ever taken
of your son or daughter at Christmas, whether it's part of your collection
or those of relatives and friends. This will apply to not only new pictures
but any pictures you have digitized. It far more than just a face
recognition option in a camera...

Wow, *that* would be useful. This past Christmas when I wanted to collect
pictures of my family to send out on a holiday card, it took me forever
to search the Windoze machine! Some were in My_Pictures under each user's
desktop, others were on the C: drive outside Documents_And_Settings, etc.

Interesting that DOS/Windows took all the bad parts of Unix and left out
the good parts, such as /home directories!

Kodak's e-finder technology, another innovation is a feature where all
digital content is automatically given a unique identity, enabling users to
instantly access any image or information they wish anytime, anywhere.

All that's needed is an EXIF search tool, assuming pictures have EXIF,
which many still don't, plus there is non-JPEG.

As to the ad, I am surprised that you found it boring? I thought it was
pretty good. By the way, it was only 3.41 minutes long. Maybe you saw
something else?

It reminded me of an old Saturday Night Live, with Apocalypse Now parody
guest-starring Martin Sheen. Francis Ford Coppola appeared, talking about
technology futures in Hollywood. After he rambled on for quite a while,
Martin Sheen said "I could tell the man was stark raving mad."

Ron Baird wrote:

edited, for brevity

Kodak's e-moment technology, has an intelligent system where pictures have
the ability to automatically recognize each other. So, without human
instruction, a picture will use its metadata to find another picture with
related data, and assemble into new groups based on how they relate to one
another. For example, imagine being able to access every picture ever taken
of your son or daughter at Christmas, whether it's part of your collection
or those of relatives and friends. This will apply to not only new pictures
but any pictures you have digitized. It far more than just a face
recognition option in a camera.

Kodak's e-finder technology, another innovation is a feature where all
digital content is automatically given a unique identity, enabling users to
instantly access any image or information they wish anytime, anywhere. This
intelligent content technology would again take metadata tagging to the next
level by enabling organization of pictures based on GPS location, automatic
scene classification (beach, birthday party, etc.), decade mapping, and
include the noted face recognition technology and more.

Another element of the future services, is Kodak Perfect Touch Technology,
that will automatically detect and fix, before the user knows it, common
photographic flaws such as under-lit pictures, high contrast scenes,
back-lit shadows and red-eye in both still and motion images. You will
simply enjoy your picture taking more.

edited

Hello, Ron:

Fantastic! Is Kodak's promising, new digital technology available in its
EasyShare software, and/or elsewhere?


Cordially,
John Turco