New Casio Camera Feature is Creepy

Dave at CES: Maybe it was the demonstration, but I don't see the appeal of a new feature from Casio. New cameras can put a moving person onto a still picture, say a kid bowing on top of one of her drawings.

At best, I don't see that anyone would use it much. At worst, I found the combos a bit creepy. Maybe it was just the choice of subject matter.

No less than the company's venerable founder, Kazuo Kashio, demonstrated how a model's smiling image could be added to a birthday card. The camera captured a loop of the model and it then appeared atop a still image of a birthday card. All done inside the camera in an impressive display of the innovation that Casio is known for.

But the loop ran endlessly, giving the model a disconcerting look as her smile came and went, came and went. Other demos had kids waving from cards or castles they'd drawn, with the loops again making them look odd and awkward. A final one had a little girl hugging one of the astronauts on the moon. Weird.

I don't mean to discount the tech here. As Barbara Krasnoff at ComputerWorld points out:

Blue-screen special effects have become a staple of movie making, and now could become a staple of home photography. For those of us who have researched the history of motion pictures, the ability for anyone to quickly and easily create a composite moving image is something of a wonder.

Something of a wonder, maybe. I think she's wrong on it becoming a staple. The feature seems one that families might take advantage of occasionally, but more likely rarely. And that's if they figure out how to do it without creeping out their friends.