Everyone's found themselves in this situation at one time or another: you're in a picture-perfect setting, but a selfie at arm's length won't cut it. You want to be in the picture, so you wait for a friendly looking passerby and ask them to take it. But, now it's out of your control, and chances are the resulting snap won't turn out exactly as you'd imagined. Samsung knows you're too polite to hold the stranger up while you convey your vision, so it has come up with a camera feature that does the explaining for you. It's described in a recent patent filing, and the gist is that you select the backdrop and take an initial snap that acts as a guide for the next, similar to how some panorama modes work. With a silhouette of the desired scene now showing atop the live view, the designated stranger just needs to let you get in the shot, line the overlay up with the live scene, and hit the shutter release.

The patent application also talks of editing the overlay, such as adding a circle to show the photographer where you'd like your face to be in relation to the backdrop. If you want the passerby to know how well they're doing, the claims explain an on-screen "composition score" that would rate their lining-up skills. And, if you'd rather trust the final decision to the camera, a ball-in-the-hole scenario is described that'll automatically engage the shutter release when the live view matches your ideal layout. This is just words and a few diagrams at this stage, mind, but if the patent gets granted, we could eventually see such a feature added to Samsung's smartphones or Galaxy cameras. Until then, you'll just have to put your trust in strangers and hope they have at least a basic understanding of the rule of thirds.

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Software, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: USPTO (1), (2) (PDF)

Smartphone camera flashes are notoriously weak compared to dedicated models, but what if you could fire them from several handsets at once? Since none of us have the millisecond timing needed to do it manually, Apple has filed a patent application to let any number of iOS (or other devices with a flash) fill in the light automatically. It'd work by using a master device as the camera, which would trigger slave devices positioned around the subject to fire their flashes when the shutter is opened. A test image would first be taken and analyzed by the software, which would then remotely adjust the intensity of the slave flashes to produce the final photo. The filing allows for virtually any device with a sensor to act as the capture device and a broad variety of illumination devices, including dedicated lights, smartphones, tablets or camera flashes -- though we imagine Apple would concentrate on its own products. If you're already planning to use friend #1 for a kicker light, friend #2 as an eye-light and friend #3 as a hair light on that next outing, please remember it's still just an application for now.

Filed under: Cellphones, Apple

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Source: USPTO