Iris Camera Concept Reinvents Blink Detection

General camera use may well have been heavily cannibalized by cellphone cameras, but that hasn't stopped innovative concepts from attempting to rework the way we shoot photos. Iris, by designer Mimi Zou, is just one such unusual approach: rather than anything so mundane as a button to fire off a frame, Iris watches the user just as keenly as it does their subject, activating the shutter-release when they blink.

Now, we've seen blink-detection on the other side of the camera, making sure the subjects don't have their eyes closed when the photo is captured, but Iris' approach relies on the photographer controlling things with their own eye movements. A blink grabs a picture, while widening or narrowing the eye controls the zoom.

Meanwhile, biometric face recognition systems would identify whoever was in-shot, tagging them automatically. That may sound far-fetched, but Canon already offers point-and-shoots that can spot up to twelve people they've been trained to recognize.

Zou envisages both local and WiFi-connected storage being used, though there's nothing to say that the camera will automatically spot whether you're suffering from allergies and decide you don't actually want to fire off fifty shots in rapid succession. As always with these concepts, don't go looking for them on shelves any time soon, though this is something we'd imagine smartphones with front-facing cameras could actually be coaxed into doing relatively easily with the right app.

[via DesignTaxi]