In this patent, discovered by CanonNews, Canon is applying for a hybrid optical and electronic rangefinder viewfinder. It would also have the ability to switch to fully electronic, full optical, and hybrid as machine translated and described below.
In the image pickup device, the function of the sight and the function of the electronic viewfinder are realized by using different display devices, so that the image pickup device becomes large. Therefore, the present invention presents a small display device capable of switching between a sighting device and an electronic viewfinder.
An image in which an image from the objective window and an image displayed on the image display element are superimposed can be visually recognized.
In the above image figure (a) shows the mirror semi-transparent and figure b) shows the mirror fully reflective – allowing Canon to switch between optical and hybrid easily.
Could we ever see this in a Canon small RF camera? It's really hard to say, but it's an interesting design. I would love for Canon to go back into the past and make a small rangefinder camera.
Maybe Canon could reduce batterydrain a lot - and honestly said, the EVF is still most liked for my old eyes in my 1DXIII and 5DIV in reason of resolution and contrast.
I'd sell a kidney for an RF canonet
But a *digital* Canonet, that would be great, I wonder if dual-pixel can be used to get a not-completely fake rangefinder EVF simulation.
Let's follow that line of thinking...why not a modern TLR?
I'm still waiting for the Canon "3003" (as in Rollei 3003) digital body. RF mount, of course. Maybe this would be the way to create it.
With additive manufacturing and a deep parts bin (a problem at the moment, I know, but this too shall pass), this really isn't a difficult thing to do.
But the most recent M6 body has NO eye-level viewfinder of any kind.
What irritated me was that they didn't offer the M6-II and detachable VF as a kit. You could either get the camera body by itself, or the camera, plus VF, plus a lens I didn't want (in one case I already had the lens, in the other I had a more-than-comparable Tamron lens). And they wonder why people sell their kit lenses!