Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: wolfnowl on June 29, 2012, 01:33:14 am

Title: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: wolfnowl on June 29, 2012, 01:33:14 am
This may belong in the Coffee Corner, but it IS a camera...

http://core77.com/blog/photography/beyond_the_looking_glass_a_seeing-eye_camera_by_mimi_zou_22779.asp

Mike.
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: EduPerez on June 29, 2012, 05:50:11 am
This may belong in the Coffee Corner, but it IS a camera...

http://core77.com/blog/photography/beyond_the_looking_glass_a_seeing-eye_camera_by_mimi_zou_22779.asp

Mike.

Didn't Canon have a camera that allowed to select the focusing point by just looking at it in the viewfinder?
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: francois on June 29, 2012, 05:59:01 am
Didn't Canon have a camera that allowed to select the focusing point by just looking at it in the viewfinder?

If I remember correctly, it was the EOS 3 (film camera).
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: mbaginy on June 30, 2012, 01:56:45 pm
If I remember correctly, it was the EOS 3 (film camera).
That was a nifty feature!  Also the EOS 5, EOS 50-E and some EOS 30 models featured eye-control AF.  I toyed with it for a while using the EOS 30 and found it quite useful - even wearing eyeglasses (though not sunglasses).  Odd, Canon no longer offer that.
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: Deardorff on July 24, 2012, 08:18:37 pm
EOS 3 worked fine with the eye control for some and not so well for others. Art Wolfe even did ads for Canon touting the eye control autofocus.

I have wanted a digital EOS 3 equivalent every since going digital. Canon is close with the 5DMkIII but still not there.
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: LKaven on July 25, 2012, 03:26:43 am
So far what the IRIS seems like to me is a student project in design that succeeds mainly as an exercise in self-promotion.  It was a good way for the designer to get a job doing real work.

At most, it looks like an attempt to rip off the thermostat design in camera terms.  But it understands nothing about how cameras actually work or how people use them.  Looks good as a paperweight, but my hand hurts thinking about it.  It comes dressed up in flowery design language to try to generate some mystique.  But in the end, I'm still looking for the point of it and coming up empty. 

Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: Jeremy Roussak on July 25, 2012, 03:58:21 am
If I remember correctly, it was the EOS 3 (film camera).

The EOS50e had it as well. I bought the camera because it looked a decent camera and thinking that the eye-control feature would be a pointless gimmick. In fact, it worked surprisingly well and I rather miss it. I think it helped that I have very dark brown eyes; there's much less difference in reflectivity between the sclera and the iris in (more attractive? Paul Newman?) blue-eyed types.

Jeremy
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: Deep on July 25, 2012, 04:19:35 am
The EOS50e had it as well. I bought the camera because it looked a decent camera and thinking that the eye-control feature would be a pointless gimmick. In fact, it worked surprisingly well and I rather miss it. I think it helped that I have very dark brown eyes; there's much less difference in reflectivity between the sclera and the iris in (more attractive? Paul Newman?) blue-eyed types.

Jeremy
My eyes aren't dark at all and the eye control autofocus worked brilliantly on my EOS 30.  I really, really, really struggle to understand why not one digital SLR has that feature.  It was so fast, no mucking around recomposing or fiddling with controls to get the focus point in the right place.  Sigh....
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: NikoJorj on July 30, 2012, 03:56:38 am
I really, really, really struggle to understand why not one digital SLR has that feature. 
I've sometimes heard it worked well with not too many focus points, and that the focus point density of today's cameras would put too much strain on the system, which would have a hard time deciding if the user looks at that point or its neighbour.
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: theguywitha645d on July 30, 2012, 11:38:10 am
Minolta made a compact camera with eye control. It was a very dense array that covered almost the whole frame and it also could track objects moving through it. It was a film camera.
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: Deep on July 30, 2012, 06:36:38 pm
I've sometimes heard it worked well with not too many focus points, and that the focus point density of today's cameras would put too much strain on the system, which would have a hard time deciding if the user looks at that point or its neighbour.
I would readily give up having heaps of focus points if I could have eye-control back again!

Don
Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: Deardorff on October 04, 2012, 03:26:12 pm
When shooting sports or wildlife when you had to pick out a specific face in the offensive line or backfield or focus on a duck going through reeds out of focus in the foreground the eye focus of the EOS3 was a welcome feature. As I wrote, for some it worked well. When you used it more it would work even better, somehow building on you and how your eye moved in the frame.

Following a football or receiver or rugby player going through others was easier using it than doing it by hand - and quickly moving to another face or area of the frame was as quick as changing what you viewed in the pentaprism. Something developing as a linebacker came in from the outside to nail a QB - the eye control quickly changed to focus on his face as you looked at it without having to recompose anything for AF points in the camera.

Title: Re: IRIS: "a biometrics enabled camera controlled by your eye"
Post by: Ed B on October 04, 2012, 07:15:43 pm
I would readily give up having heaps of focus points if I could have eye-control back again!

Don

Without doubt. Hell, I'd give up all kinds of bells and whistles on this generations cameras to have that back. My 3 sits here unused and I have been thinking of getting some chrome film lately and heading out and shoot something with it. The eye control was brilliant.