Name: SONY HDR-CX12  
Category: digital still and movie camera
Price: Open price (about JPY130,000)
Release date in Japan: July 20, 2008

The newest model in the company's venerable Handycam line, the HDR-CZ12 brings "Kao Kime" and "Smile Shutter" face-recognition technology to your filming sessions.

The "Kao Kime" is pretty old-hat by now: face-recognition software catches the faces in your shots, and matches the focus, color, brightness, and flash to best flatter those. "Smile Shutter" is a tweak on the smile-recognition found in many still cameras: the feature watches for grins, and snaps a 7.6-megapixel still photo without interrupting your filming. The result: you get your movie, plus some automatically-taken stills of your subjects' best smiles.

There are some options you can play with, such as placing recognition priority on either adults' or children's faces. You can also choose from three levels of smile sensitivity, from "just smirk a little" to "come on, let's count 32 teeth". 

In still camera mode with movie recording off, you're good for shots up to 10 megapixels. As a movie camera, the HDR-CX12 records AVCHD video in full HD (1920x1080i), with MPEG-4AVC/H.264 compression. The included 8GB Memory Stick will record up to 3 hours of video on LP mode, or 55 minutes on highest-quality full HD FH mode.

The camera's "Quick On" feature wakes it up from sleep in one second. The included "Picture Motion Browser" software for your PC will create 3-megapixel photos from your movie clips, and even let you search only for shots containing smiling faces.

Other specs: 2.7-inch touch-panel monitor, 12x optical zoom (150x digital), "ClearBit" CMOS sensor with "Exmore" image noise reduction and "BIONZ" image processing engine, optical "active lens" shake reduction, Zeiss "T*" anti-glare lens, Memory Stick slot. 420g with battery.

More info: http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/handycam/PRODUCTS/HDR-CX12/ (Japanese)

Technorati Tags: cam digital still video