Say "cheese": Sony technology focuses on smiles

A model displays Sony Corp's new Cyber-shot DSC-T200, which detects a smile and automatically takes a photo, displayed at Sony Dealer Convention in Tokyo September 12, 2007. The 8-megapixel camera will go on sale in Japan on September 21 for a price of 48,000 yen. ($421)

TOKYO (Reuters) - If a picture's worth a thousand words, then how much is a smiling photo worth? About 40,000 yen ($350), based on Sony's new "smile shutter" cameras.

Using face-detection technology, the 8-megapixel, DSC-T70 and DSC-T200 Cyber-shot cameras won't snap a high-definition picture until a selected subject smiles.

Even with more than a handful of people in a picture, a photographer can designate which face to focus on by touching an LCD panel with a special pen.

"Using the smile-recognition shutter function selected by the touch panel, you can pick which of up to eight people is the key smile," said Sony Product Development's Akira Tokuse.

"In a parents and baby shot, you could select the baby."

The so-called "Say Cheese" technology has three setting levels, from a slight grin to a belly laugh.

Japan sales start next week and global shipments this month.

Sony's smile technology joins Japan's Omron Corp, which developed "smile check" software that analyses happiness by facial features like mouth and eye wrinkles or lip separation.

($1=115 Yen)