High tech webcams with autofocus for use in videoconferencing etc. are very good and will focus accurately on what is in front of them.

This tech falls flat on its arse when a tiny fly zooms in front of the lens, since the camera tries to focus on the fly, and then when the fly zooms off the camera then has to struggle to re-focus on the user's radiant visage.

Naturally the solution to this is an image-recognition algorithm that recognises and ignores all types of fly when choosing what to use as its autofocus target.

However, that is not the idea presented here.

The idea here is that a high tech autofocussing fly-ignoring webcam would pose a particular use problem for entomologists. Whether they were trying to show a fly, or using the webcam to monitor flies, or whatever flyey thing they were doing, the image would remain stubbornly fuzzy.

Proposed then is a specialist "fly mode" which, when enabled, over-rides the fly-ignoring algorithms and allows the lens to accurately focus on flies.
-- pocmloc, Oct 19 2021

But surely the obvious, massive flaw in this idea is that when a pioneering entomologist finds an extraordinary new species of fly which is so novel and bizarre in appearance that the camera doesn't recognise it as a fly then, no matter how desperate they are to show it off to their colleagues, the "fly mode" will randomly hunt around and fail to find it.
-- hippo, Oct 19 2021


sp. "breeds" [+]
-- pertinax, Oct 19 2021


[hippo] there can be a "learning mode" where you press a complex set of buttons and then hold up an example of the new fly you have bred, and the Fly Mode algorithm adds the new example to its image recognition database. Don't forget to disable "learning mode" before trying to use the device for a normal video call with your family!
-- pocmloc, Oct 19 2021


Ah yes, that makes sense
-- hippo, Oct 19 2021


Could a fly be recognized more on flight behavior than on static imagery?

Maybe if the etymologists wore fly costumes and ran around the room then a Fuzzy-Logic neural net learning program could work to distinguish "geniune fly" from "guy in a fly costume." Especially if the costumes were fuzzy...
-- RayfordSteele, Oct 19 2021


Hmm, [Rayford] - I think that will require an entirely separate mode for [pocmloc]'s enhanced webcam - a "fly-guy" mode to allow etymologists, entomologists and anyone else to share crazy videos of themselves dressed in fuzzy fly costumes running around the room.

I just had to look up the origin of the word etymology. For completeness.
-- Frankx, Oct 21 2021


I think it's derived from "Etty!" which was the traditional cry of the person in the ancient Greek Olympic games, who ran around dressed as a fly shouting "Etty!" at the competitors.
-- pocmloc, Oct 21 2021


See? They're both from the same root.
-- RayfordSteele, Oct 21 2021


Also:
Entom-etymology: studying insects that have influenced other words.
Etym-entomology: studying the origin of insect names.
(Or around the other way...)
-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 21 2021



random, halfbakery