A camera with a built-in smile sensor

Somewhat adrift after the "megapixel war" ended, digital camera manufacturers are now turning to features which help amateur snappers take the best possible pics.

The latest play in the game of “my camera is better than yours” – following on from red-eye reduction and others - is a feature which works out whether all the subjects are smiling before taking a photo.

Foto Nation's technology locks onto the faces in a picture using so-called Face Detection software, and measures details such as the shape of the mouth and whether a person's eyes are shut or not.

“Think of it as a blink warning,” Foto Nation's technical manager, Valentin Mocanu, said.

There's also scope for a new type of self-timer, where instead of being taken after a set interval, the picture is simply snapped when everyone is smiling.

The problem, of course, is shutter lag. “There is a chance a person's facial expression may have changed by the time the photo is taken, but that depends on the camera, not our technology,” Mr Mocanu said. “Some cameras certainly have longer delays.”

So far Foto Nation, which is based in California, has only licensed its software to Samsung and Fujitsu, and even then only for use in cameras, but it hopes to convince the likes of Nokia that the feature will become popular on phones too.

se