Mar 11

If you’ve shopped for a digital camera lately, you have probably noticed lots of them touting something called face detection. This doesn’t mean the camera can detect a certain face, although that technology is well underway. It just means that the camera, while in autofocus, can detect a face (or faces)  in a photograph and adjust the flash, focus, and exposure for them. It looks for the pattern of a human face and, depending on the camera and the algorithm it uses, it may scan for just eyes or for a nose, eyes, and mouth . It will only detect faces within a certain distance, again depending on the camera, so in group shots it won’t  focus and flash for the back of the group. It’s only supposed to work with humans, not pets. I have a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS with face detection and while it works most of the time, sometimes it will think my dog’s ear is a face or that part of the carpet is a face (poltergeist, perhaps?). Regardless, face detection can make your phototaking life a little easier, especially when it works. And if you don’t like, most cameras will let you turn it off. What’s not to like? Now, the face recognition software where you can find all the pictures of Uncle Jim on your computer, based on his face… I’m not really looking forward to that.