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Problems with finding smiles in photos
Here's another example of technology trying to solve a problem that would be handled with a few minutes of bit literacy training.
For those camera buyers who haven't read the managing photos chapter in Bit Literacy (summary: take tons of shots up front, then filter later to a very few good ones), camera companies are touting a shiny new technology - an automatic smile-finder, which will identify "good" photos for you. (Darn those moments when we actually have to think for ourselves!)
As Daniel Rutter points out in this post, the SmileCheck really does find toothy grins:
Mmm, good photo!
I'm sentimental for times when smiling in photos was not required (pre-1950s?)
I suppose that it might be vaguely useful in a point and shoot camera for those people taking snapshots where they want people smiling.
But I agree with Mark. Using a digital camera (and a suitably large memory card) just get snap happy and snap away. Some of your best shots can be of people when they are not smiling, but are caught in a more natural state.
As Zephyr states, smiling for a photo really doesn't need to be a requirement.
This is a very concrete example of how embarrassingly useless sophisticated technology workarounds for very simple problems can be. Glad I bought your book--maybe you should also be marketing it as a digital camera accessory?
I'd be happy to - just tell the camera manus to get in touch with me :)
This reminds me of the HP cameras that are supposed to take 10 pounds off the photo subject by subtly "squeezing" that part of the image. Something that can be accomodated with a little human interaction (posing the subject skilfully).
I think you're missing the point of the smile finder. As I understand it, the idea is that you can put the camera on a tripod and then set the self-timer to automatically take the picture at the time when all subjects are smiling, rather than an arbitrary 10 seconds after you start the self-timer.
That's a related feature, FaceTime... the drawback there is - what happens if one person isn't smiley enough for the camera - how long do people have to stand there waiting?
Reminds me of what HAL might have said: "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't take the picture. John still looks sad."
@ Michelle: I'll be glad when a camera can *actually* take 10 pounds off a photo subject. That'll be the day! ;)
In all fairness, this technology isn't being developed with digital cameras in mind. Facial expression software is really about things like improving the computer/human interaction, recognizing drivers who are becoming drowsy and picking out potential terrorists when they are boarding a plane. In fact, it could conceivably be very useful in computer-aided usability studies. When added with eye-tracking, process-tracing, etc a facial mood recognition algorithm could include data on user's annoyance factor.
That said, this is definitely an example of companies adding unnecessarily complicated bells and whistles so they can add a new bullet point on their packaging, with no consideration of the user's experience.