Eye tracking Autofocus?

[Gavjenks]

I was browsing through some reviews of old Canon film SLRs to find one for my girlfriend to practice with, and discovered that the Canon nicer film SLRs apparently used technology that tracked your pupil in the viewfinder to know where in the frame you were looking in order to know which autofocus point to use?!

Why the hell isn't this in all of our higher end cameras on the market today?

I use eyetracking in my research all the time, and the degree to which the technology has advanced in the last 5-10 years is massive. They use featherweight eyetracking systems on birds today. I can assure you that a highly controlled, easy to calibrate situation like a fixed location eyepiece would be a cakewalk.

 

[JerryLove]

That's a good question. It seems like an excellent feature. I wonder if there was a major problem with it.

 

[deveaushawn]

Sorry, but that information is classified. Your gubmint has taken control of that technology for use in weapons.

 

[Designer]

Sorry, but that information is classified. Your gubmint has taken control of that technology for use in weapons.

Actually, I would not be in the least surprised. They use facial recognition and retina mapping, so yea, probably holding eye-tracking for themselves.

Not to worry much, we should be able to obtain it from the Chinese in a couple more years.

And it will be cheaper.

 

[Overread]

It seems to work pretty well even on the older Cameras - got a camera with 3 AF points that eye tracks from Canon and I think the version after that one had even more AF points tracking the eye. US military even has their helicopters with a minigun eye-tracking turret!

I think it might be a case that Canon might have leased or lost licence to use the tracking tech they had or for some reason its use in DSLRs was ruled out. Might be they tried it a touch too early and discounted the feature that is now becoming strong enough to be a serious contender.

It would take a little training but being able to watch a birds eye and have the camera keep a lock on that feature would be fantastic

 

[lambertpix]

It seems like there might be a place for this, but I can also see some serious usability issues. You'd almost need something like a "begin tracking / end tracking" button like the AF begin/end buttons we've got now, because I can imagine I'd get tired of the AF point walking all over the place as my eye moved around. I can imagine it's a feature you'd really have to be willing to learn to use properly... maybe that's why it was pulled.

 

[Judobreaker]

I could see a couple of problems...

The precision you can get from eye-tracking is probably not as high as you would like. If the tracking is off by a single millimeter you might end up with a completely incorrect focus.
Another problem is that the eye can move really fast which I imagine could make the system lag behind or even get lost sometimes. This is probably fixable though so not too much of an issue I guess.
The last problem with the principle itself is the focus distance when multiple objects are behind each other. You could be shooting through branches, a fence or slightly dirty windows. How would the system determine what to focus on? It's basically impossible to see where your eye is focused. Even if you can track your eye position up to a 1000th of a millimeter, this problem is probably still going to make the system unreliable.

Besides these problems with the principle I see another technical problem which is the placement of the system in the camera. To be able to really track the eye position you'd need to have the eye-tracking camera more or less right in front of the eye, it won't be an option to place it next to the viewfinder because you just wouldn't be able to always see the pupil. Theoretically this could be done with an infrared-mirror and infrared lighting on the eye, but it would both make the viewfinder part of the camera a lot more complex and might result in a slightly darker viewfinder too because there would be an extra element between your eye and the image.

I don't know... It might be possible to get some sort of system going but it would not be perfect and probably cost quite a lot too.
I'll stick with the current systems for now.

 

[astroNikon]

glasses, contacts causing issues.

Did MInolta have something like this too? I recall something weird before I got a XSI (or what ever it was back then) which I dumped then got a N80.

 

[Derrel]

Rumor: Sony May Introduce Eye-Tracking Autofocus Next Year

The last time I talked about eye tracking AF with anybody who is interested in photography, I was speaking with a long-time camera sales person. I asked about it, and she told me that basically, "People don't really care about it much." Apparently, it just was not that important a feature to most prospective buyers. Canon dropping the feature probably reflects that lack of importance; if it truly was a critical feature for sales success, they probably would have made a move back toward it over the past decade, but they have not. The utter lack of interest in the topic in forums speaks to its irrelevance in the marketplace of ideas, and the camera marketplace.

As to the above blurb about Sony possibly introducing this feature--that now looks like perhaps one of those little "throw 'em off the trail" PR leaks, but who really knows?

 

[Railphotog]

I had both the Canon Elan IIe and the A2e with eye controlled focusing. Sold them off a long time ago and have picked up copies in the past while for my collection. I loved the feature, and recall still trying to use it with later models that didn't have it.

Worked fine for me, and I was especially pleased that it would work even when I was wearing sunglasses. The cameras had several focusing squares in the viewfinder, looking at one would cause the camera to focus on that point. The Elan and the A2e had 3 focusing squares set horizontally; I later acquired a 7e that had 7 squares, five horizontal and two vertical. The Elan and the 7e would work when the camera was held vertically.

They also had another square in the upper right that when looked at, would stop down the lens, neat feature!

 

[MGRPhoto]

The cameras had several focusing squares in the viewfinder, looking at one would cause the camera to focus on that point.

For some reason I was imagining your eye being used to pinpoint focus on the subject and Judobreaker's description of possible issues made a lot of sense. After thinking about it just using your eye to determine a focus point makes the system seem a lot less complicated. With how many focus points we have now it seems like it might not be that accurate.

 

[Gavjenks]

Yes that is how it works. It simply determines which focus point is used, instead of fiddling with the arrow keys on the camera body. It only needs to triangulate your pupil and corneal reflection, which is trivial. Not figure out how far your eye is focused.

And almost none of these technical barriers described would be an issue at all. Keep in mind this already WORKED something like 10-15 years ago. And eyetracking technology has improved much much faster than the number of focus points has increased.

For example, @Judo: the precision and accuracy of eye tracking systems today is sufficient to measure a smooth trajectory of your eye DURING a saccade. In other words, while your eye is flitting from one point to another, the system can take multiple samples and plot out a smooth curve, which can be used to infer information about your cognitive biases and subtle attentional allocation to objects off to the sides of that trajectory (they will "pull" the curve closer or further from a basic trajectory). This is fairly easy affordable technology to do even that nowadays. And position wise I believe they are simply built into the viewfinder inside. And yes they probably use infrared LEDs, which cost like $1.20.



If it is something that people just don't give a crap about though, like Derrel suggests, well then okay. Seems pretty awesome to me though. Say goodbye to ever focusing and recomposing again.

 

[MGRPhoto]

If it is something that people just don't give a crap about though, like Derrel suggests, well then okay. Seems pretty awesome to me though. Say goodbye to ever focusing and recomposing again.

I agree it does seem awesome. Especially when combined with something like the AF-On button.

 

[vintagesnaps]

I have an A2 and then got an A2e... I think I sold it and the A2 is still sitting in a drawer (last time I put a battery in it sat there and went - what? put a new battery in it and it still just sat there... not worth the expense of a repair). I used it for awhile and obviously didn't like either model all that well since I quit using it.

I rarely use autofocus, to focus manually seems second nature to me which I suppose is from learning that way and having had enough practice to get good at it. I think focus points for me are just distracting instead of using the focus ring or split image.

 

[DarkShadow]

I had the A2E Along with the ELAN 7N. If I recall the eye focus tracking needed calibration with out glasses but worked very well once locked in. I think I also recall it worked great in Horizontal but it struggled in vertical orientation or didn't work but not sure.I Never tried flying or moving objects back then, so I couldn't say how quick or accurate it was. Needles to say, the 7N was the best SLR Camera by Canon I ever had and sold off the A2E.