The whopping rise of smartphones may have trivialized general camera use, but that hasn't stopped innovative concepts from reinventing the way we take pictures. One such innovative concept is the Iris Camera, by mechanical engineer and product designer Mimi Zou. Instead of simply requiring users to push a button to shoot a frame, Iris observes the user just as it watches the subject, and activates the shutter-release when the user blinks.
While we've seen blink detection before, designed to ensure the subjects don't have their eyes closed when the photo is shot, this is an entirely new thing. The Iris Camera is shaped like a lens, and controlled by the user's eye. It detects when a known user takes the camera up to their eye and automatically loads the user's preferred settings, such as ISO and aperture. Instead of the mundane button pushing, just blink twice to take a picture. If you want to zoom in or out, simply widen or squint your eye. Meanwhile, biometric face recognition systems can identify the people in the shot, tagging them automatically. This feature can be disabled.
Zou envisioned both SD card and Wi-Fi-connected storage. Wi-Fi connectivity also allows for easy sharing and uploading. According to the presentation video, the product shots indicate the Iris Camera seems able to achieve a 35mm equivalent focal length of 18-200mm, with an aperture range of f/3.5-5.6. The camera seems to be in the early concept stage, however, so don't expect to see it on store shelves anytime soon.
Still, Zou did have a working prototype on show as part of her graduate display at the Royal College of Art in London. Should investors show interest in the project and decide to invest some cash towards more research and development, the Iris Camera could be off to a promising start. For now, there are some questions that remain to be answered. For instance, how would the camera work for someone with allergies? Perhaps it could automatically spot when users are suffering from an allergy or have something in their eye and realize they don't actually want to shoot dozens of pictures in rapid succession.
