Face Detection--your experiences
 

I'm curious to hear some real life examples of the strengths and weaknesses of face detection. Anyone?

With it turned on it would see a face but then it would just search for focus until I just gave up and turned it off.

My experience with SR11 and CX12 is that it recognizes faces fairly well, not sure how much adjusting it does, but you definitely get boxes around faces... smile shutter (related technology) works pretty well on the CX12. I feel like it can't hurt having the camera monitoring and adjusting on the fly, so I've left it on.

In the end I suspect it takes a fair amount of the overall processing horsepower of the camera, and turning it off might actually be an advantage? But I can't say for sure...

This is one of those rare features that I see moving UP from consumer to the pro-level, especially for ENG and non-narrative types of situations.

Each manufacturer has their own algorithms, but the latest generation of camcorders (say those released at CES 2009) have much better practical application than earlier face detection.

So for example in Sony's face detection, they actually use a higher bit rate in the face detection area to compress that part of the image less, and allows you to select the face you want to be primary by simply touching the lcd screen. Canon combines it with their "instant" autofocus system to be able to do some pretty amazing tracking shots, even when the face turns to profile.

Yes its an electronic setting and it can fail, but I think in one or two more generations, face detection will be a standard video tool at most levels of production, and we'll wonder how we ever did without it.