Future anthropologists will have to be forgiven for concluding, based on photographic evidence, that sometime around the spring of ’09, the human race ceased to frown or blink.
The premium point-and-shoots making their debut in the next couple months are equipped with new "smile-detection" and "blink-detection" technology which activates the shutter precisely when bright-eyed people are beaming. Nikon’s COOLPIX S60 (you may know it as Ashton’s cam) will automatically focus on faces and eliminate red-eye too.
They’re very fancy, these wellbutrin shooters, and I know our Facebook albums will quickly reflect the enhancements, but I’m not entirely sold on the full-automatic innovations. If I’m taking a long trip on open road, I want to be driving a stick. And if I’m telling the unorthodox story of our real lives, I want to be shooting in a manual mode that won’t necessarily edit the scenes for me. I’d hate to miss contemplative shots of the shy, with their beautiful, downcast eyes.
Other recent digital imaging developments have me a little more enthused…3D cameras and prints, for instance. At the annual PMA Show in Vegas earlier this month, Fujifilm was showing a prototype of a 3D camera with two lenses, one for the right eye and one for the left. You shoot both off at once, the camera syncs the images view-master style, and you’ve got the makings of a 3D illusion. A "lenticular" sheet of plastic (lined and clear, kind of like on hologram toys in Cracker Jacks) turns the camera’s LCD screen and photographic prints into 3D viewers. So if the kids are blowing bubbles in a picture, those bubbles appear to float right out at you….and all without those ill-fitting 3D glasses. Fujifilm is planning to put out digital frames with this "FinePix Real 3D" technology as well.
Also new & cool is the trend for still cameras to capture high definition video. The Canon 5D Mark II is the best-selling high-end D-SLR with HD movie mode, but we’re seeing it on pocket cams now too. Canon’s new SD780 IS, in fire-engine red, even has a mini-HDMI cable jack, allowing you to plug directly into a flatpanel and watch your HD video straight from the camera. Know what that says to me? Camcorders as a species aren’t extinct yet, but the vultures are circling.
