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Smile / Face Detection                                        233


           face will show up as a green rectangle before you press the shutter release
           button  halfway.    (That’s  right  –  registered  faces  and  unregistered  faces
           show up the same way on this camera.  Previous cameras had registered
           faces framed by a magenta square.)
           Does it work?  If the entire face fills a goodly portion of the scene, and the
           lighting  is  good,  and  the  face  is  not  partially  obstructed  (like  with
           sunglasses, hats, etc.) then this feature actually does a good job.

           5.31.2   SMILE SHUTTER

           Here’s another variation on the same theme.  If you can detect that a face is
           in the picture, you can also look a little closer and tell if that face is smiling.
           And you can tell the camera “Yo!  Don’t wait for me to push the button.
           Take the picture as soon as you detect someone is smiling!”.  And so, with
           autofocusing  enabled,  if  you  invoke  Menu       7    Smile  /  Face
           Detection   Smile  Shutter ON, the camera  will  constantly  analyze  the
           scene and it will not rest until it finds a smiling face and takes the picture.
           You can even adjust its sensitivity by using the Left and Right arrows to
           choose between Big, Normal, or Slight Smile.  This feature can really come
           in handy when you’re taking self-portraits.
           It’s actually kind of a fun feature to play with.  When you enable Smile
           Shutter, you see a vertical scale on the left, indicating the strength of the
           smiles it detects.  And you don’t have to press the shutter release button
           halfway.  Just point the camera in a general direction of a face.  When the
           camera  sees  a  face,  the  vertical  scale  on  the  left  springs  to  life,  and  the
           camera starts to focus on any faces it finds.  When the “smile strength” is
           higher than the currently-set threshold, (that white triangle to the right of
           the vertical scale), the camera takes the picture.  It will continue doing so
           until you disable the feature by turning the camera OFF (when you turn it
           on again the function defaults to Face Detection ON – Registered Faces).
           Try  enabling  this  feature  and  shooting  some  family  photos  you  have
           hanging on the wall.  It will give you a very good feel for what works and
           what doesn’t for this feature.
           Smile  Detection  is  hard  to  do  algorithmically  (although  not  as  hard  as
           recognizing a registered face), and so in order for it to work properly you
           have to help the camera out a little.  The face has to appear rather large in
           the picture (it won’t work with a face that’s a mile away, for example).  The
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