Thursday, April 23, 2009
Making On-Camera Flashes Smarter
Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Articles & Resources" @ 11:29 AM
"David: I enjoyed your rant about the flash on digital cameras. You mentioned the clueless people who take flash pictures at an event from 200 yards away, totally pointlessly - but I've always wondered why these modern, smart cameras can't turn off the flash automatically when they're more than 10 feet from the target?"
Image Credit: spmcfarland on Flickr
The above comment was sent to David Pogue, who replied that there's no reason why these cameras can't implement that exact feature - which got me to thinking about other ways point and shoot cameras can be made smarter. One of my personal pet peeves - in addition to pointless flashes popping off by clueless camera holders - is how noisy most point and shoot cameras are. Many cameras make noise when they turn on - typically a beep of some sort but some make "zooming" sound effects - followed by a beep every time the user presses a button navigating a menu. There's a beep it makes when taking a picture, and often a beep when the user moves from image to image in playback mode. I can't help but feel irritated when I'm at a special event - wedding, a ceremony of some sort, etc. - and the moment is littered with the near-constant BEEP BEEP BEEP of digital cameras. Read more...