Patent: Eye-controlled autofocus for mirrorless cameras

Neat!

To be honest, while I feel like I'd be able to keep my eye on target to direct focusing, I wonder how accurate my eye movement would be with a moving target. With so many focusing points I'd bet it would be difficult to keep your eye on a small subject and have it hold focus. I suspect the selection might have to just assess which subject you're trying to focus on and have the camera make the more accurate focus adjustment from there - like a focusing hand-off. I.e. I look at a face, hit focus, and the camera performs and holds eye tracking on that face. That could be a killer feature for sports/wildlife where I could use eye tracking to select a subject and have the camera hold it from there among other possible subjects. Not that I do a lot of that kind of photography, but I'd suspect that would be attractive to a lot of buyers.
 
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YES YES YES, bring it on! The one and only truly intuitive way to control an AF-system.
Works like a charm on my old Elan 7e. A 2019-worthy new implementation in mirrorfree cameras should be absolutely fantastic. Now with a gazillion of AF-points over 100% of frame. Brilliant. Can't wait to see it in EOS M5 Mk. II and/or M50 Mk. II.
 
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YES YES YES, bring it on! The one and only truly intuitive way to control an AF-system.
Works like a charm on my old Elan 7e. A 2019-worthy new implementation in mirrorfree cameras should be absolutely fantastic. Now with a gazillion of AF-points over 100% of frame. Brilliant. Can't wait to see it in EOS M5 Mk. II and/or M50 Mk. II.
Canon may reserve it for FF MILCs.
 
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Canon may reserve it for FF MILCs.

possible, Canon being nerfing marketing-differentiating Canon. Although it would be really smart of them to include it in every single Canon EOS camera. It would be their single and truly outstanding USP vs. any competing product by any other manufacturer at every level (especially if their new patents hold water). I would even forgive Canon -1 EV dynamic range vs. Sony/Nikon sensors in exchange for a well-working, "2019-worthy" implementation of ECF. :)
 
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Neat!

To be honest, while I feel like I'd be able to keep my eye on target to direct focusing, I wonder how accurate my eye movement would be with a moving target. With so many focusing points I'd bet it would be difficult to keep your eye on a small subject and have it hold focus. I suspect the selection might have to just assess which subject you're trying to focus on and have the camera make the more accurate focus adjustment from there - like a focusing hand-off. I.e. I look at a face, hit focus, and the camera performs and holds eye tracking on that face. That could be a killer feature for sports/wildlife where I could use eye tracking to select a subject and have the camera hold it from there among other possible subjects. Not that I do a lot of that kind of photography, but I'd suspect that would be attractive to a lot of buyers.

I could see this working well with eye AF - for instance the camera focuses via eye AF which would select the closest eye, and by looking at the eye you want in focus, eye AF would jump to that eye.

Canon may reserve it for FF MILCs.

more than likely. consider the extra room it would require in the camera body, this really wouldn't fit in with smaller EOS-M cameras.
 
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sdz

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Canon may reserve it for FF MILCs.
Canon might do that. But, why would it?

At this moment, you added FUD to this discussion. We do not know what Canon will do. Nor do we have enough information about the tech to guess at what cameras would work with this technology.
 
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I could see this working well with eye AF - for instance the camera focuses via eye AF which would select the closest eye, and by looking at the eye you want in focus, eye AF would jump to that eye.
Exactly my thoughts. Not necessarily a focus point selector, but a subject selector - the photographer's eye basically tells the camera what subject he/she is trying to focus on, and the camera holds that focus using the focusing technology we already have in mirrorless cameras. I could see that being a huge asset when there are a lot of potential subjects in frame where the camera has a hard time finding the one you want. For instance, trying to photograph moving action where there are a lot of faces in the frame, you could potentially just look at the face you want to select it, and let the camera hold that focus while you look around to set the composition or check the edges of the frame. Maybe a pipe dream, but that would surely be faster than a joystick or touch to focus on the screen while looking through a viewfinder.
 
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I have a Elan 7E still out in my studio, the eye focus works, but is not fantastic and does not always pick up my eye movement, so I have to watch and make sure the AF point moves correctly. I've recalibrated it numerous times. That is really old technology, they can probably make it faster and better by a huge factor if they want. I don't think being mirrorless has anything to do with it, its in the viewfinder and whether eye position is calibrated to the image on the focus screen or a lcd screen should not matter.

After uploading the photo, its amazing how similar the old cameras and the new ones look.


Canon  Elan 7E_02.jpg
 
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