There’s always the feeling I get when the amount of patent applications start to reach a tempo that perhaps it’s a sign that Canon is about to do something. Mind you, Canon has trolled me in the past with this, so anything is possible. Here’s another patent application that discusses an APS-C dual fish eye lens. We can determine that it’s for APS-C because the APS-C sensor is generally 23mm in width, and that means each half’s image circle has to fit into 12mm or less. With a little fudge factor and light bleeding, that would mean that each image…
Author: Richard
Canon has been exploring quite a bit of methods of doing tilt in a more automated fashion, from having the lens electronically controlled to this patent application (2024-057829) that has the tilt movement controlled inside the camera itself. Canon in this patent demonstrates a technique that allows them to tilt the sensor while keeping the space required for the mechanism relatively small and compact. According to Canon; It is an object of the present invention to provide a camera device that can suppress the influence of wiring on sensor tilt drive while suppressing the increase in size of the device.…
Today, Canon released their financials for the first quarter of 2024. Overall the company’s sales increased for the year, but operating profit was down. Personally I think the first 3 months of the calendar year are always tough to predict because a lot of it depends on what was left over from Christmas. If retailers haven’t sold all their Christmas inventory, then they aren’t ordering new inventory, and then we have the post Covid bounce in 2023, and how that may affect year on year results. In other words, Canon isn’t doomed. Let’s deal with imaging since it’s always the…
In this patent application (2024-056859) Canon is looking at improving the reliability of an SPAD sensor. A SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diode) sensor, operates by putting the diode into, yes, you guessed it – avalanche mode. In loose terms, that requires a high negative bias voltage (somewhere around -50 to -100 volts), which causes the avalanche current to develop. When the diode is in this state, each photon that hits the light sensitive part of the diode triggers a pulse. And this way, the diode can accurately count the number of photons that hit the diode. This is scaled out…
MAP camera is a very large Japan based camera company that is usually biased more towards professional camera systems which is why you don’t see the cheaper APS-C units, or even compacts taking over top spots on this list, but will on lists made by BCN, etc. I have a little of a soft spot for Nikon even though they were the dark side for the longest of times, they were still Canon’s respected competitor for decades. There was a time in the not-so-distant past Nikon was #1 in overall independent lens camera sales and for a brief time they…
Canon has released the LI5030SA CMOS sensor for sale. It is a full frame global shutter sensor with 12 bit read out. From Canon LI5030SA is a CMOS type of solid-state image sensor with a 35mm full frame effective pixel array of 19 Megapixels. It uses a global shutter function instead of conventional rolling shutter. It enables simultaneous exposure timing for all 19 Mega pixels. It can output an effective 5688 x 3334 pixels of video at 57.99 fps and 12bit via 24 channels of digital signal output. LI5030SA series consists of LI5030SAC (color), LI5030SAI (RGBIR), LI5030SAM (monochrome) and LI5030SAN…
In this patent application (2024-055909) Canon discusses quite a few embodiments of an dual fisheye 3D/VR lens similar to the RF5.2mm f/2.8L Dual Fisheye. The one of interest, is the APS-C embodiment as it’s one that is rumored to be coming out soon. Now generally, we have to go by half image height of lenses to determine what sensor size the lens is for, and dual fisheyes are a little more complex in this regard. Since the image circle has to fit into 1/2 of the sensor width, for full frame that is less than a 18mm image circle, and…
An article in Nikkei points out that the Japanese domestic market has grown for the first time in 13 years. Which kind of shows just how bad it’s gotten for the japanese marketplace. The Japanese market has gone from its peak of over 10 million units down in 2010 and has basically been in a freefall since. Gfk reports that 1.2 million units were sold in 2023, a fact that I find interesting considering only 520 thousand units were shipped domestically in 2023. I guess that means that Japanese camera stores just had that much inventory sitting around. The graph…
About 3 years ago Canon showed off a prototype of a posture fit device that would recognize when you were slouching and generally having bad posture while sitting at your desk. It would then remind you to correct your posture. It would continually remind you of this by flashing a light and rocking back and forth. As I slouch at my desk when writing this post, I’m reminded that I could probably use one of these devices (and thought so at the time, too) Admit it, you want one too, it’s adorable! According to Canon at the time; Our relationship…
We will be releasing an upcoming series of articles on infrared photography that I’ve been slowly working through the last few weeks, and this amusingly popped up in the list of patent applications published. In this patent application (2024-054762), Canon is exploring using sensor pixels more sensitive to IR light to assist with color images. Their reasoning is that infrared light travels through haze and smoke better, and this would allow for better imaging performance in adverse conditions. While this sensor would probably see fit to exist in security cameras, it could see applications in a variety of more specialized…