Patent ID: 7889269

Claim:
An image taking device comprising: an image taking device which picks up an object image and converts the image into image data; a face detecting device which detects whether there exist one or more human faces in the image data; a switching device which switches a face detecting function to its effective or its ineffective position; a controlling device, when the face detecting function is switched to its effective position and one or more faces are detected in the image data, which automatically controls at least one of exposure, focus, white balance and picture quality so that the detected faces can be optimally photographed; a recording device which records in a recording medium, face information representing the presence of a face in the image data associated with the image data based on detection result by the face detecting device; a determining device which determines based on the face information, whether a percentage of image data in which there exist one or more faces in the image data recorded in the recording medium exceeds a predetermined threshold; and an instructing device which provides an instruction on prompting a user to switch the face detecting function to its effective position when the determining device determines that the percentage of image data in which there exist faces exceeds the predetermined threshold at the time of turning on a power supply.