New Camcorders Promise Improved Face Recognition

Tag : Color CMOS


Sony's new soda-sized HDR-CX12 Handycam records video at 1920 x 1080, takes 10-megapixel photos (onproprietary memory cards), and has an improved CMOS sensor thatenhances the video clarity. It also has a full touch LCD that isused to control all the recording features.

But what is most interesting about this one is that it includes aso-called 'Smile Shutter' feature that takes photos at the sametime that you are recording. Basically, it intuitively snoops onyour smiles and snaps away. Unfortunately, this probably won'tdistinguish between real smiles and the fake smiles that are thecustom at most of the Dumas family dinners.

The other main feature we're looking for is the quality of thesound recording. Consumer video cameras are notorious for soundingcanned and unnatural, but this one has Dolby Digital 5.1-channelsurround sound recording and a zoom mic.

Panasonic's new cameras, the flash memory HDC-SD100 and the hybrid HDC-HS100, offer something else: better control and image colorreproduction. Both of these are AVCHD camcorders with a 3MOS sensorsystem, and like the Sony camera, they also record to an SD card.The hybrid includes a 60 GB hard drive on top of that, which ispretty big size, but only about half of the best capacity availablefrom rival Canon.

Both models include the tri-MOS system, which assigns a specificcolor (RGB) to each sensor, processing the light that comes throughthe lens in better detail.

These also have regular face-detection features that focus on theneeds of the face as needed. And guess what? These also look like asoda can, albeit an expensive one.

The Sony HDR-CX12 camcorder will come out for $900, and theHDC-SD100 and the HDC-HS100 will both be released in earlySeptember of this year, for $1,100 and $1,300, respectively.