This was posted as a comment by Michael Stephens from PhotoL_ynx about the upcoming Fuji S5 and the PL software. Thought it deserved it’s own spot.
Move this to where you feel appropriate….
Today at SPAC (School Photographers Association of California), I met with the guys from Fuji. Particularly, Darren Pepple, who has been in the forefront of desigining the accessories for the upcoming Fuji S5 SLR. Through a Nikon MC 35 GPS cable one can hook up a serial barcode scanner. With the scanner, data can be input directly into the image Exif information. This will associate a positive ID directly with the image.
Also, the camera will can be passworded, so that the settings can be locked, preventing them from being changed. This is useful for larger studios, who have photographers who want to tinker with the camera and change it to other settings that may make it not function with the studio’s workflow.
What I thought was most impressive, is that, rather then trying to use the controls to pan in on a face within a photograph on the back LCD of the camera to check to see if it is in focus and exposed correctly, it will automatically recognize faces and center them in the frame.
Coordinates can be recorded into the Exif data, that can then be used for centering images and sizing heads in outside software.
Phot__ynx can already extract exif information from jpg images and relate it in quantity to images. The Fuji S5 would be an aswesome tool for a school photographer to have in conjuction with Photo__nx software for matching student data to images and outputting products & picture packages for schools.
In addition, in speaking with Darren from Fuji, Photo__nx will be able to get the necessary information from Fuji to enable it’s software to use the facial recognition data to center and headsize the images automatically as the images load into the software.
The Fuji S5 is due out for release mid February…. Stay tuned!
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[...] is mine to say what I want (within reason it seems) and to explore areas that I want to explore. My last post that I did where I simply copied a comment from Michael at PhotoLynx caused a bit of email to roll in. I don’t know why, but it was meant to show another [...]
Today Fuji had a demonstration of their Fuji S5 camera at PSPA (Professional School Photographers Association) out in Las Vegas. They announced that the camera will have it’s first firmware update available on March 22, 2007. Apparently, the password locked users out of too many features, including white balance. The new firmware will allow the user the ability to modify which features get locked.
Also, they announced a few of cool barcoding features:
1. The camera can be set so that it requires a barcode entry before it allows a photograph to be taken.
2. The camera can be set to use a single barcode across multiple images. Scan once and it will keep the barcode information the same for all images until a new barcode is scanned.
3. When the March 22, 2007 firmware is available, it will accept multiple barcode images, so the user can scan a barcode containing an identifier such as a record or student ID number and then scan a package.
Of course, Photo L y n x software is able parse out the Exif data embedded by the camera into the images and match it to the images.
Another very cool thing is that PhotoL y n x has a link to an update of the PL software on Fuji’s website!
http://www.fujifilmusa.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/ServiceSupportProduct.jsp?prodcat=858246
Well, the FujiFilm Pro S5 is out now. I even helped a client get four of them from Desktop Darkroom. A couple of rumors that I heard during PMA:
1. FujiFilm has a supply of 30,000 of the S5 Pros and has orders for 150,000.
2. The Nikon MC 35 GPS that is needed to hook up the barcode scanner is unavailable due to military applications taking up Nikon’s supply.
I emailed with Darin at Fuji with regards to the Nikon MC 35 GPS and he said that Fuji is getting their own supply of them, but the are very loosely about 6 weeks out from getting them in stock.
We are working on a couple of other things for this camera. I’ll write about them once they are closer to reality.