How can I automatically adjust camera height for subjects of different heights?
Asked 10/23/2017
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I’m building a photo booth/container that detects when a person enters using a PIR sensor. A camera connected to a PC will then detect the person’s face and take a photo. The challenge is that subjects may range from small children to tall adults. What’s a practical way to automatically adjust the camera position or framing so the face is at the right height?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
8y ago
2 Answers
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For a number of applications, this issue is often solved by using a dedicated PTZ Camera, which has a camera with a zoom lens integrated with a motor-driven and controllable pan+tilt head. Most of these cameras nowadays are also IP cameras that can be controlled via network or IoT standard interfaces.
In surveillance, these cameras are often mounted upside down from a ceiling, some distance away from the target area to be monitored. This reduces the maximum sweep angle needed to adjust for the height of the individual entering the surveillance zone, and also avoids a potential issue where the PTZ might not be able to look down at a subject (the way standing adults address children) if it were mounted right-side-up, as the sweep area for the tilt is typically from parallel to the base to straight up.
Originally by user19985. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user19985
8y ago
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A practical solution is usually not a motorized up/down stand, but a controllable camera system that can reframe the shot.
A PTZ camera (pan-tilt-zoom) is designed for this: it combines a motorized pan/tilt head and zoom lens, and many models can be controlled over a network. If you mount it above or away from the subject area, it can tilt down and adjust framing for different subject heights without physically moving the whole camera up and down.
If you specifically need vertical camera movement, you could build a motorized lift using a vertical rail, gears, and a stepper motor controlled by something like an Arduino. That’s more custom and mechanically complex than using PTZ.
So the simplest off-the-shelf approach is a PTZ camera; the custom-engineering approach is a motorized vertical mount.
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