Why not voice control over settings?

Reading another post about having trouble setting manual controls, it seems we have plenty of processing power to do voice. When that extra image processor isn't working on an image, it could be handling verbal requests for shutter speed, aperture or any of the dozens of different settings we now make. A quick search didn't turn up anything like that, but it seems like there'd be some market for it. Imagine not having to search for some obscure setting, but just telling the camera the state you want it in. Siri? Alexa?

Who needs a voice control over shutter speed? Details, details. I’m waiting for a camera I can simply tell to take the next Pulitzer Prize winning shot! :)

Think about folks on their phones sharing their business and lives with strangers. Is incorporating that into photography a good idea? I don't use cell phones so I may be the wrong person to comment.

Most events I shoot or video (classical concerts) talking is out of the question. If I'm not in a soundproof booth with talkback, I use hand signals. My phone has been on buzz since "buzz" was invented. Why would I want a camera (computer or thermostat) I had to verbally cajole into doing something?

I've worked in and taught speech processing for many years, although far more in text-to-speech synthesis than automatic speech recognition. I can tell you it wouldn't be all that difficult nowadays to deal with the the small vocabulary and simple syntax and semantics necessary to work the controls on a camera. However, I'd be very interested in how my former colleagues might deal with speech produced by a person with a nose and mouth pressed against the back of a camera. Speech gets badly distorted under those conditions, enough that even human beings (the best speech recognition engines that have ever existed) will have trouble. It would definitely encourage the use of the rear screen rather than the viewfinder.

A camera with speech recognition might be useful for some handicapped people or those with arthritis who have trouble manipulating small controls. As someone pointed out, though, a noisy background would make recognition difficult. I think the potential market is too small to justify adding this feature to a dedicated camera. Smartphones already are adding this capability and are the cameras most people use today.

I imagine a portrait session and voicing, instead of thumbing, my AF spot around "quite awkward & embarrassing". It also feels easier to press a boldly marked right button than to explain stuff. I'd prefer to see some cameras with UI on the other side.

Ok, I can see limited potential for this concept. What would be far more useful, in every household in the land, would be either a Television that responded to voice commands (however phrased !), or an add-on for current models, so that when the advertisements interrupted the flow of a show, one could simply request silence (politely or otherwise) until the actual programme re-commenced - in the meantime watching a bunch of glittering non-entities making extravagent gestures extolling the stated virtues (and none of the concomittant drawbacks) of the products they are being paid to plug - all in blissful silence. One could also change channels thusly.

 

Dream On (presumably on one of the over-priced matteresses now being offered).

Some of my cameras, and especially the digital, would sulk if they could hear what I sometimes call them.

What would be far more useful, in every household in the land, would be either a Television that responded to voice commands

Mine has had voice control for at least five years, maybe ten. It’s been great telling Cary Grant exactly when to kiss Irene Dunn. :)

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They’re so 20th Century. Stream, if you can, and they’re gone.

One could also change channels thusly.

Exactly how I do it, though I can’t remember the last time I referred to a “channel.” I just say to my remote, one of the few entities who obeys me anymore, “HBO,” “Netflix,” “Amazon” or about once a month, “CBS.”

Recently there was some controversy about Samsung TVs with voice control allegedly spying on users. The TV is always listening for commands, so it hears everything else, too. Some people claimed that advertisements were eerily related to their recent conversations near the TV. These ads supposedly appeared when the TV was booting up. For instance, if the TV heard someone talking about beer, it might display a Budweiser advert the next time it was switched on.

 

If it sounds paranoid, consider Facebook. I always know what my lady friend is shopping for online, because ads for those products start appearing in my FB feed, even though we have different FB accounts on different computers.

If it sounds paranoid, consider Facebook. I always know what my lady friend is shopping for online, because ads for those products start appearing in my FB feed, even though we have different FB accounts on different computers.

Are you sure your lady friend hasn’t hacked your FB account in order to plant gift ideas for you?:)

 

Anyway, if you have cable, whether you talk to your tv or finger it, if the cable company wants to target ads to you, they can follow your shopping habits on your credit card.

 

Who thinks most big company’s don’t know a lot of we’re doing most of the time?

If my wife caught me talking to my camera, I can't imagine what she would say.

 

Actually Minolta, always in the forefront of technology, did make a talking camera, the AFS-V. It would probably only have been a matter of time before they developed a listening camera, too.

And let’s not forget Mr Ed.

Yes, I knew it would go this way. :-)

Please, No talking cameras. If you can't figure out to change the shutter speed or aperture you really need to find something else to do. I think those Alexa things are creepy.

My cameras are already better company than most people, who knows where talking to cameras could lead us.......nowhere good according to the Mrs.

If you can't figure out to change the shutter speed or aperture you really need to find something else to do.

 

+1

Yes, and I never use elevators because I'm just so darn proud that I know how to walk up the stairs! :rolleyes:

Why not voice control over settings?

 

Siri sort of works, but I've had voice control over computers for at least a decade. I can type faster, and I suspect I can set the controls (which is not so terribly often) faster too.

 

I have also found voice control less than fully effective with my child and my dog.:(

for at least a decade

 

Now that I think on it, voice control on the Macs goes back at least to the late 70s. How time flies...:rolleyes:

If my wife caught me talking to my camera, I can't imagine what she would say.

 

Actually Minolta, always in the forefront of technology, did make a talking camera, the AFS-V. It would probably only have been a matter of time before they developed a listening camera, too.

 

Or worse, a camera that critiques.

I yell at my camera all the time.

I yell at my camera all the time.

lol. I wouldn’t worry until it starts yelling back!

How about, instead of making a more complex, difficult to use camera with more stuff to possibly malfunction & a 30 foot deep menu....

we simplify and make a camera with ONLY the essential controls, easily accessible with only a few actual function mechanisms?

 

I've been shooting fully manual film cameras but do have a hankering for a super simple digital camera with similarly easily accessible controls.

Seems Leica is about all there is in this realm. But maybe I've missed something?