Patent ID: 8022982

Claim:
A method of controlling a camera assembly, comprising: monitoring an image field for blinks by one or more subjects in the image field by: generating a video signal of the image field, the video signal having a sequence of frames; subtracting a previous frame of the video signal from a current frame of the video signal to generate a difference frame; and identifying image data in the difference frame that is representative of a blink; tracking each blink and associating each blink with a subject from the one or more subjects; generating statistical data regarding blink duration and blink rate for each subject from the one or more subjects; and in response to user input to command the taking of a photograph, determining if a blink is in progress and firing a flash of the camera assembly and capturing image data for the photograph if no blink is detected at the time of the command, else delaying the firing of the flash and the capturing of the image data by an amount of time that is based on the statistical data to minimize firing the flash and capturing the image data during a blink of the one or more subjects; and wherein a length of the delay is an average blink time of a large sample of persons minus a duration of the blink detected at the time of the command as measured from the start of the blink to the time of the command.