lowbone wrote:
The guy who owns our local camera store said that people who wore glasses had trouble getting it to operate properly.
Funny, I was about to write about my own experience using EOS 3 from back then way before my Lasik days when I saw this. I remembered the performance of the ECF was not consistent but again, I wrote it off as my wearing glasses.
Psychic1 wrote:
Eye Strain was the reason Canon's legal department had the ECF removed.
I live near Canon HQ and "Eye Strain" was the reason I received from a Canon executive while at the local shop.
mpmendenhall wrote:
The EOS3 actually uses the usual "fixed AF points." Eye focus was just meant as a faster way to select the appropriate focus point rather than scrolling through with a dial. The camera wouldn't focus anywhere on the screen; it would just select the regular focus point nearest where you were looking (and flash the focus point marker in the viewfinder so you could tell where the camera was focusing, same as with manual focus point selection).
Yes. And there were only 3-5 (depending on the model) focus points, IIRC. It worked great, but with 45 AF points one can imagine the potential problems.
Here is what Chuck Westfall wrote on the subject several years ago on The Digital Journalist site,
" Eye Controlled Focus in future Canon products cannot be ruled out, but there is no evidence to support the notion that it will reappear anytime soon. In the meantime, Canon will continue to study the market and gauge the interests of its customers in all sorts of camera features including ECF.
Similarly, I can't provide details on why the feature was discontinued after the EOS Elan 7NE. But I can tell you that it was more advanced in that camera than any of its predecessors. By the time the Elan 7NE came around, ECF supported vertical as well as horizontal camera orientations; it was much faster than before, and it had the "self-teaching" function that allowed as many as 20 individual calibrations per user for horizontal and vertical orientations according to variations in light levels, for up to three users.
From that description, it's fair to say that the implementation of ECF had become rather complex and memory-intensive, and Canon had received reports indicating that many customers were not using it for various reasons such as:
Their eyes did not move normally so the feature didn't work for them;
Their eyeglass lenses were too thick or they habitually wore sunglasses, so the camera couldn't detect their eye movement;
They didn't know it was necessary to recalibrate the system for each and every light level and/or camera orientation, so they couldn't understand why the system was only working every once in a while for them.
Finally, sales figures indicated that the majority of customers weren't willing to pay for ECF if they could buy the same camera, as in Elan 7N, without ECF for less. Considering all the obstacles, it's not too surprising to me that Canon eventually decided to drop the feature. But again, if you think ECF is worthwhile, then by all means make your wishes known. I am happy to pass them along, and you can also contact Canon's Customer Support Centers (e-Mail: [email protected]) to let them know as well."
I wrote Chuck several years ago and received a very nice reply and it was very encouraging about contacting Canon with my thoughts about ECF. Hopefully it will make a return someday as i found it worked extremely well. Most users didn't realize that it used smart logic and it got more accurate, the more times you calibrated it to your eye under differing conditions.
I worked in retail camera sales management during the mid to late '90's and sold hundred's of EOS 3's based on my personal experience with the camera and ECF. However, I always assisted the customer in setting up the ECF before they left the store. I made sure they calibrated the camera both horizontal and vertical and inside and outside before they left the store. I never had any issues with ECF not working for the customers I helped.
I think in most cases the customers failed to calibrate ECF properly and enough times for it to reach optimal accuracy. Just my take on ECF and dealing with customers that wanted to return EOS 3's because ECF didn't work of them.
