Patent ID: 8339500

Claim:
A photography support system, comprising: a plurality of transmission units, respectively held by a photographic subject and one or two or more photographers, each of which transmits intrinsic identification information; a plurality of reception units, each of which is installed in a facility, receiving the intrinsic identification information transmitted from the plurality of transmission units; a camera carried by the photographer for photographing the photographic subject; a photographic subject position identification unit that identifies a position of the photographic subject in the facility, on the basis of the identification information transmitted from at least one of the plurality of transmission units held by the photographic subject and received by one of the plurality of reception units, and the installation position of the reception unit that has received the intrinsic identification information; a camera position identification unit that identifies a position of the camera in the facility, on the basis of the intrinsic identification information transmitted from the transmission unit held by the photographer and received by the reception unit, and the installation position of the reception unit that has received the intrinsic identification information; and a relative position calculation unit that obtains a direction to the photographic subject from the camera and a distance to the photographic subject from the camera, on the basis of the position of the photographic subject identified by the photographic subject position identification unit, and the position of the camera identified by the camera position identification unit, wherein the camera displays matched auto focus areas which match to the position of the photographic subject and overlap an image of the photographic subject; the camera calculates the distance to the photographic subject from the camera for the matched auto focus areas and performs focus adjustment upon the photographic subject; the camera makes a decision whether the photographic subject is present in the matched auto focus areas by estimating a difference between the distance to the photographic subject from the camera that was calculated during the focus adjustment and the distance to the photographic subject from the camera that was obtained by the relative position calculation unit.