Keith over at Northlight Images has uncovered a USPTO patent that shows eye-controlled focus for mirrorless cameras. This has been a requested feature for quite some time and we have seen in the past on film cameras such as the EOS 5, EOS 3 and Elan IIE. It was always a mixed bag when it came to its effectiveness, some people loved it, others hated it.
From USPTO Patent US 2021/0051265
An image capture apparatus detects a subject in a captured image. The image capture apparatus further recognizes its user based on an eyeball image of the user. The image capture apparatus then selects a main subject area from among the detected subject areas, based on information regarding subjects captured in the past and stored being associated with the recognized user.
There was a patent for this back in 2019, but Canon has added to the technology by adding user identification and remembering what you looked at previously. It sounds like the “AI” fun may hit an EVF near you someday.
EOS ELAN II / EOS ELAN IIE - Canon Camera Museum
I wonder if there could be some really great synergies with the current eye detection systems in mirrorless bodies already. For instance, a modern eye-tracking system may not need to be used for selection of a specific autofocus point, but rather subject selection. If you're photographing a crowded space with lots of people in it (i.e. maybe a sports field or a street filled with people and lots of faces), I could see a ton of value if you only had to look at the subject you're after and the camera would find that subject's eye/face. That could make switching subjects real fast, one would think.
Neat!
And yes, I had an Elan IIE (still probably have it lying somewhere), and its eye autofocus did not work reliably with my eyes.
They seem to go way deeper than just AF control with this. The patents talks about identifiying different users based on their iris signature and saving user specific subject preferences. If I understand it correctly, you and your partner could share a body. When one of you prefers taking pictures of flowers, flowers will be recognized as the most likely subject in a scene when this user operates the camera, and if the other user prefers birds for example, those will be their default subjects. Which also implies that the bodies will have greater subject recognition capabilities in the first place.
Wasn't there a thread just a while back about people wishing for more security on their devices? Seems like with essentially an iris scanner built into the EVF, that might be another application they could look at since they process that information anyway.
It works well including the eye controlled focus (for me anyway) and I found this feature works best if you use a large eye cup which holds your eye in a fixed position such as Hoodman's (which are also much more comfortable than the awful standard ones)
I believe people with low contrast irises had poor results though.
Just imagine how well it could work today especially in combination with DPAF ii and using the initial selection by your eyes followed by the automated eye tracking.
Great security feature too which could unlock your camera at the start of each session
Really hope this is included on the R7