MPEG-7 camera extends the capabilities of conventional cameras by analyzing its scene in order to generate a contentbased description according to the recently approved MPEG- 7 standard. This gives to the camera a large variety of current and potential applications, such as surveillance, augmented reality, and virtual display. This paper provides an overviewof what is meant by an MPEG-7 camera, discusses the above mentioned applications, and provides an implementation example of such a camera using existing hardware products.