A major annoyance with digital cameras is the orientation of the image. Portrait shots are always recorded in a horizontal format. Programs exist to losslessly rotate the images after they are uploaded, but why not do it right when they are taken?

A small mercury switch inside the camera determines what direction it is being held, and records the image accordingly. It wouldn't be perfect in all situations, but it would correct most portraits.
-- Aq_Bi, Jul 22 2005

This is one of those things that seems so obvious it's shocking it hasn't been baked.
-- Acme, Jul 22 2005


I imagine it's not done on the camera because the camera screens are normally orientated landscape wise. And maybe because the lossless rotation requires a fair bit of processing power. That said, I reckon a little tilt switch that records the orientation and puts it into the jpeg header EXIF style would be nice, that way your desktop imaging software could orient them all automatically.
-- neilp, Jul 22 2005


Oh for crying out loud even my crummy little HP digital camera does automatic image orientation. If you posted this 6 years ago you might have had something.

Search for "orientation sensor" and ye shall be rewarded; HP does it, Kodak does it, Canon does it, Olympus does it, the gorgeous Panasonic Lumix does it, Leica does it....

I'd say it's widely known to exist.
-- bristolz, Jul 22 2005


Yup, what [bris] said. It is so baked, it has gone stale.
-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Jul 22 2005


//I'd say it's widely known to exist.// - How come I've never seen this on anyone's camera? I'd say that it's known to exist and should be more widely so.
-- wagster, Jul 22 2005


My associate [fridge duck] has a phone camera which does this.
-- pooduck, Jul 22 2005


//My Nikon 995 doesn't// The Coolpix has got so many bendy bits, the damn thing would need a degree in three-dimensional trigonometry to know which way it was pointing. For the record, my Pentax *istDS doesn't have an orientation sensor either, though I'd guess they've been around for around four or five years at least.
-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Jul 22 2005


"When mine starts doing it, then I'd say it's baked."

When your camera starts sprouting new features unbidden I'd say it's a miracle.
-- bristolz, Jul 22 2005


There will always remain a lot of cool stuff out there, baked, that I don't know about (yet). So, [-]/baked, but cool anyway.
-- sophocles, Jul 22 2005


One of the great things about this place is that you can found out about all that cool stuff from people's links.
-- wagster, Jul 22 2005


Baked, but hold the mercury.
-- moPuddin, Jul 22 2005


I have two top-of-the-line digital cameras and neither comes with this feature. Maybe this was once baked, but I think it's gone stale and got fed to the pigeons. We need to bake a new one.
-- phundug, Jul 22 2005


Nice idea, but my point-and-shoot Canon Digital ELPH does this.
-- -----, Jul 24 2005


OK... I just posted this; [Ian] and [AWOL] were kind enough to point out a) that it was even staler this time around, and b) that [aq_bi] got there first. [+] even though it's baked.
-- david_scothern, Jul 24 2006



random, halfbakery