A couple of patent applications caught my eye over the last week – and of course, with me traveling and living out of a suitcase right now I filed it in my head to revisit. These two patents show some unique pixel structures that we are not used to seeing from Canon. Keep in mind that one of the goals of Canon’s sensor development is also to provide sensors for industrial, automotive, and other applications than our precious cameras. When you consider how many cameras there are in autonomous vehicles, you certainly can’t blame Canon for wanting a piece of…
Author: Richard
In this patent application (Japan 2023-178037) Canon is describing a tilting EVF for a mirrorless camera. I had the EVF-DC1 for the EOS-M system and loved the tilt function of the EVF. It gave a different perspective and shooting angle and was a useful feature. This seems to be a continuation of Canon’s research into tilting EVF such as this patent here before. In the prior patent application, Canon describes the mechanical movement of the EVF to minimize the overall size of the EVF assembly while providing a tilting option. In this patent application, Canon is describing the connection ribbon…
OpticalLimits formerly known by camera review elders as photozone.de has produced their review of the Canon RF 100-400mm F5.6-8.0 Without even really studying the review, it’s difficult to find fault in a telephoto 100-400mm that sells for $599 USD. Key features of the Canon RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM include; In the review, OpticalLimits notes that the resolution is good throughout the range. [T]he Canon RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8 USM IS is quite good for what it is. On the positive side, the broader center performance is very good throughout the range – and that’s what’s most important with such a…
Over the years I’ve seen some crazy designs patented by Canon and applications like this one are fun to read. I mean, here’s a patent application where someone was told. “Go nuts, see what you can do”. Let’s make no mistake the lenses described here would be big, heavy, and frighteningly expensive but we are here for that. The purpose of these embodiments is to have an apodization effect (atypically a Defocus Smoothing Coating – or DS) and also have minimal vignetting. Canon RF 70-200mm F2.0-2.8 DS Canon RF 28-70mm F1.6-2.0 DS Canon RF 35-70mm F1.8-2.0 DS As with all patent…
Canon is at it again with this form factor and finding more ways to combat the most obscure heat problems you can imagine. Why heat is an issue, is aptly described in this part of the patent application. When a user takes a picture while holding a digital camera, image blur may occur in the photographed image due to camera shake or the like. One known method for reducing such image shake is to oscillate (translate or rotate) a unit that supports the image sensor within a plane approximately perpendicular to the imaging optical axis depending on the amount of shake…
Part of me was thinking to myself that Canon’s lens releases have been very sluggish, or at least they just “felt” that way. So I decided to take a look at just how Canon did in their history from the EF mount onwards. So armed with Excel and Canon Camera Museum (honestly, if you haven’t spent a few hours there yet, you really need to do so), I went to work. Having grabbed all the data I plotted out just how many lenses Canon has developed over the years (232 so far), and wanted to see if the rate looked…
Today, two more patent applications discussing quad-pixel auto-focus sensors have been published by the Japan Patent Office. The first patent application 2023-167634 deals with the fact that scan times will vary between row and column scanning, which could lead to inaccurate auto-focus performance. Many conventional image sensors give priority to reading out signals in either the row direction or the column direction, and then move on to reading out the next row or column. For example, when reading out row by row and sequentially shifting the rows to be read out, the pixels in each row are read out at the…
A patent application (2023-166831) from Canon has just been released for improved cooling for a small form factor camera, that also includes IBIS. The form factor that Canon describes seems to be quite similar to that of the Canon R5C, but smaller. Originally I was going to suggest this was for a cinema camera, but nowhere in the application does Canon specifically mention video. It’s safe to assume though, that this amount of cooling would atypically only be necessary for shooting video – so you can draw your own conclusions. From the patent application, Canon specifically mentions IBIS as being…
In this patent application (JP2023-166867) Canon looks to improve the performance and accuracy of a Quad Pixel autofocus capable sensor. If you have not been following sensor developments, Canon right now splits the pixel in half and uses the difference in the signal from the one half and the other half to determine how far away the focus is. Using this information Canon can calculate the distance the lens has to move to focus on the target at that pixel. However, this method is prone to be very inaccurate if the lines of contrast that you are focusing on, are…
Gordon from CameraLabs has done a great review of the Voigtlander 50mm F1.0 Nokton RF. Yes, that’s an F-One-Point-Zero. Of course, the only reason it’s allowed on our precious RF mount legally is that it’s manual focus, so, at F1.0, that’s going to provide some challenges. But if you grew up with manual focus lenses or want to jump into that world for the first time, perhaps this smaller lens is right for you. How much smaller? Quite a bit actually. The Voigtlander is a little smaller than the Canon EF 50mm F1.2L, so shown below is a comparison just…