Casio debuts its Greenscreen-ish 'Dynamic Photo'

For the last decade, Casio Computer has kept a sharp focus (no pun intended) on digital imaging innovations. This week, the company is showing off its latest feature, a sort of on-the-fly greenscreen capability in point and shoot cameras.

Last year, Casio's big development was the high-speed digitization process in the EXF-1, which makes 60 fps still photo imaging and 1200 fps HD video possible. This year, the company has taken that technology and used it in a new way.

Casio's President and CEO Kazuo Kashio presented the new technology in a keynote yesterday evening. He said that though the new point and shoot cameras will look ordinary on the outside, the high speed technology inside was capable of creating "miraculous" hybrid images with the "Dynamic Photo" function.

Kashio demonstrated the result by capturing a brief movie of a young woman proffering a wrapped present, and then by taking a picture of the area where she was standing without her in the shot. By doing this, the camera's software is able to separate the moving image from the background as if the action was performed in front of a green screen.

"This camera is magic!" exclaimed Kashio, as he placed the moving image of the woman over several different pre-drawn greeting card-style backgrounds. In a moment of almost excessive Japaneseness, Kashio cycled through dozens of silly ways this feature could be used. It has practical aspects as well, such as the ability to shoot a 360 degree photo of an item being sold on eBay.

Dynamic Photo will be available in the 9-megapixel Exilim EX-FC100 point and shoot, which will carry a retail price of $400.