Cologne, Germany - The latest cameras at the Photokina trade expo next week in Germany will have satellite-navigation features and switches that ensure subjects are smiling, an industry figure says.

The fair, held every two years in Cologne, is a major venue to launch new digital and film cameras, camera-phones, camcorders, lenses, flash systems, photo printers and software.

Organizers describe the six-day event, which begins September 23, as the world's biggest camera show, with 1,500 exhibitors from 50 nations taking part.

Constanze Clauss, spokeswoman for the German photo industry federation PIV, said at a pre-fair briefing, "You are now seeing the global positioning system (GPS) coming into some camera models."

The sat-nav system records the exact location on the earth of the picture.

On a camera-phone, such a picture can be sent to another sat-nav- enabled phone as a come-hither message. The second phone can then be used as a navigation device to guide the way to the scene, or onwards to a nearby restaurant, thanks to map data in the device.

Databases can also be set up so that shutter-bugs can use wireless links to download information about a sight, such as a monument or theme park, and save the data with the picture, Clauss said.

Photokina will also exhibit Sony's new camcorder with a feature known as the smile shutter which can recognize facial expressions, a spokesman said. 

The device, shown earlier this month at the IFA consumer- electronics show in Berlin, grabs still photographs out of the video stream where the subjects are smiling and saves them as portraits.

Clauss said the camera makers' facial analysis software was good enough to track nine or 10 people at once.

"The shutter only selects a picture when everyone's eyes are open and they all put a nice look on," she said.

"We are getting into a new dimension of communicating by images," said Rainer Schmidt, secretary of the PIV, which organizes Photokina in partnership with Koelnmesse, the Cologne fair company.

Camera makers continue to compete to offer the highest resolution in digital pictures.

Koelnmesse said some new single-lens-reflex digital camera bodies would take 65-million-pixel images.

A pixel is a dot of colour making up an image.

Only professional photographers can afford such an extreme resolution, which requires high-quality lenses and very high-capacity memory cards.

But the top of the range for amateur photographers will this year surpass 20 megapixels.

Making cameras easier to use has also become a priority, with many users fed up with complex menus and functions they do not understand.

PIV said consumers wanted cameras to be smaller and to maximize the number of images they can take per second, and there was also a trend to get rid of buttons and use the displays on cameras as touch screens.

Many users found it easier to enter commands via the screens, where each command is shown as a coloured button.

Camera phones at the show are to feature bigger displays and software to reduce the effects of camera shake, just like regular digital cameras.

After-market lenses will be offered with surfaces specially treated so that raindrops do not stick to them.

Batteries also face new competition. Power packs will be on display that generate electricity from fuel cells or solar heat.

Among the specialized equipment at Photokina will be heat-seeking cameras that can "see" warm surfaces in dark and fog, or detect heat leaks in insulated buildings.

Firefighters can for example use them to detect hot spots or to find injured people in smoke-filled buildings.

This year's Photokina features a special section for underwater cameras aimed at picture-taking divers.

Clauss said the business is also paying more attention to younger users, who can afford cameras of their own these days.

"Kids like to experiment, take frank pictures and discover unusual subjects. They can be extremely creative in a playful kind of way," she said. (dpa)