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American photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams once said, "There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." He didn't say anything about robots. But Adams, who died in 1984, could not have anticipated a new device from Sony designed to replace human shutterbugs by making its own decisions about when to take a photo...
...Party-shot was released in September without much fanfare, even though it's the first robo-cam on the market aimed at consumers. The obvious question is, have digital cameras, nowadays equipped with a considerable amount of artificial intelligence, come so far that they make human photographers obsolete? We tried out the Party-shot at a recent office potluck, and came away thinking it's less a substitute for a human photographer, and more a supplement...
...Mated with Sony's latest Cyber-shot models, either the WX1 or TX1, the dock is certainly less conspicuous than a roving photographer, making only a quiet whirring noise as it sweeps its surroundings for human faces. Most of the photos it takes are focused and properly exposed, even when the flash is off indoors. It frames portraits well (although at middle distances, it tends to cut people off at the waist) and it's not stymied by profiles or multiple faces, as long as nobody's moving. It can easily take 150 photos an hour at the high frequency...
...face-recognition software foolproof. The robo-cam was thrown by decoys such as posters of TIME magazine covers, and it had an almost offensive tendency to ignore human subjects with dark skin tones. The WX1 in particular had trouble establishing what Sony refers to as "optimal picture composition," zooming in and out repeatedly on a motionless subject, like a morally divided Peeping Tom. And it can have fickle taste, sometimes snapping 20 shots of one target, sometimes ignoring someone standing right in front...
...came in August, when the city of Moscow unveiled an inscription to Stalin in the marble entryway of the Kurskaya Metro station. In giant letters, it reads: "Stalin raised us to be loyal to the fatherland, inspired us to labor and great works." The praise caused an outcry from human rights groups and opposition politicians, but officials haven't taken any actions to remove it. (See pictures of Putin on vacation...