Visual perception is an active process.
Human observers scan their visual environment in an active manner through eye, head, and body movements. The use of the camera metaphor facilitates the design and development of models of the visual system through the incorporation of notions and principles of computer vision. Nevertheless this approach falls short at explaining or mimicking biological plausible performances and behaviours. The talk reviews old and new work on human vision and argues that the camera metaphor is an inappropriate and misleading guideline for understanding biological visual systems.