New Canon Patent Finds

great now people will be able to shoot/chimp without even taking the camera away from their eye.

Noooo! I just left Canon because I wanted to use a sensor based image stabilisation system with fast primes! Now that I am with Sony, don’t tell me that Canon will have in-body is now!!!

stealth chimping!!!!

I’m surprised no one is complaining about this camera already based on the patent. Wait, someone is. My bad.

Both of the patents are for SLR’s. They have flip up mirrors and pentaprism / mirror box type viewfinders.

Haha!

well if you’re not shooting tethered, there’s not really any other way to check sharpness immediately except by chimping.

this does come into major play when you are taking low-light handheld architectural photography in places that don’t allow tripod use. I’m sure there are other scenarios, but that’s my common application of chimping

Or there’s the “Oh my god! Did I actually GET that play” chimping? Usually preceded by the “Oh my god! I MISSED that play because I was chimping!”.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I wonder if this might explain the “extra large bump” on the 1Ds Mark IV mentioned earlier by test photographers? OR is it too soon to release a product based on the release of these patents. Seems to me they would want to keep the technology secret as long as possible without releasing a patent, then post the patent just before the products release date to avoid letting the competition catch up before you even release the product. What do you all think? To me it seems like perfect timing for the 1Ds.

Paragraph 34 (noted as “[0034]” in the patent description) specifically states image stabilization via the sensor.

let’s wait to see the technology, and the implementation, before we blow an o-ring, shall we?

My girlfriends SX20IS has a electronic viewfinder and it works really well for reviewing photos. Especially in the the bright sunlight.

Sensor stabilisation please!!! I love the combination of that and a f/1.4 prime. It is something I miss badly when I jumped ship from Sony to Canon (*cough*A700 replacement*cough*).

no problem. ill let bad photographers be bad photographers.

Live histogram would be awsome! I like the idea of being able to view previous image in viewfinder and still see image. Could be good for sports photographers/nature photographers checking previous shot but keeping eye on stuff happening in the now. Would be nice if you had prisim for photos and could use liveview in viewfinder for movie. Best of both worlds and help movies in bright lights.
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Awesome! And you know, it’s Canon, so how many megapixels do you think they’ll try and cram on that stabilization unit? They seem to be packing pixels everywhere they can these days…

Heh, didn’t think that there was anything resembling plain English in that, but live and learn.

You’d probably have to use one or the other with double stabilization–kind of what you’d have to do with Sony/Pentax/etc. bodies with Tamron/Sigma VC/OS lenses. It’s possible that any new bodies would detect that lens IS is on and automatically disable sensor IS.

But if Canon could get working what you’d think “hybrid IS” should have meant… 5-6+ stops IS? This might even give Canon the excuse to relaunch their IS lenses with additional price increases to make them simultaneous-IS compatible.

“But if Canon could get working what you’d think “hybrid IS” should have meant… 5-6+ stops IS?”

Gosh, 5-6 stops IS? Amazing, let’s get rid of tripods now.

So let’s see, say shooting full frame, at 200mm. The rule of thumb say 1/200s, let’s apply our new and amazing SSS (six stop system) – 1/3 of a second. Wow. Those models sure would have to sit still to make sure that the pictures come out sharp.

Garbage. On low-light, for general photography, IS is such a relief. The 50mm f/1.8 is barely an improvement over the kit lens in low light, since by stopping down to f/1.8, while you get really nice shallow depth of field, the entire image turns soft. It doesn’t matter all that much since at high ISOs your pictures will be soft anyways due to noise, but it’s a bit depressing to have your prime perform the same as the consumer kit lens that comes with every Rebel.

It’ll be great for Canon to have sensor-based IS if only as a compliment to their superb lens-based IS, and in the long-term, it would be wonderful if they could get the sensor-based IS to couple with the lens-based IS.

Easy if the model is a statue. :P

[Insert standard IS disclaimer of not affecting subject motion.]

Guess I’m wrong, both lens and camera shown have stabilization.

“[0045]Therefore, the object image can be guided to the light-receiving surfaces of the image sensor 127. The camera performs an image capturing operation. In this state, an image stabilization mechanism 171, which is connected to the image stabilization control circuit 172, can shift and rotate the image sensor 127 in a predetermined direction to cancel the blur of an image. Thus, the image stabilization mechanism 171 can prevent the image from shifting undesirably and lowering the resolution.”

“Shift and rotate the image sensor”; do any of the other competitors who use sensor shift stabilization actually rotate the sensor?

“What’s with everyone’s crazy obsession with sharpness?”

Sharpness is now easy to check on a monitor. Same goes for noise, auto focus accuracy, camera shake (due to lack of IS), vignetting, distortion, chromatic aberration, etc. We are obsessed because it is now technically possible for us to be obsessed.

If all we ever did was take a photo and make a print, we wouldn’t notice these minor flaws and wouldn’t be so obsessed about minor improvements to counter them. I take photos, look at them on the monitor, feel gutted that some aspect of IQ was not quite right, print them out, and then cannot tell that anything is wrong when viewed at a normal distance. People should make more prints to cheer themselves up.

Even more important, if someone else looks at your photos, they will consider what you are trying to communicate more than what equipment was used and what level of technical perfection was achieved. Images do not need to be perfect to be good. Look at all those great photos that are technically flawed and you don’t think, “Hey, that picture isn’t very sharp.”

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/02/13-photographs-that-changed-the-world/

In the picture (linked above) from the D-Day landings, the lack of contrast, the graininess and the severe motion blur probably add more than they take away from the image.

Tell me that the “innovator” bit was sarcasm, please!

This might be on the 60d..

For low light applications get yourself a tripod, monopod or simply a pod. There are thousands of possible ways to reduce the movement of your camera, which are cheaper than a good IS.
This, however will not help you in any way, if you are taking pictures of anything that moves (neither the IS nor the ___pods).
Therefore I prefer fast lenses over lenses with IS (and fast lenses with IS are too expensive for me ;) ).

I doubt that you would be happy with that. An IS is engineered for photos, not for videos. The IS wont remove the shaking of the camera caused by your own movement (or only to a very small degree). To get good results you’ll still need a steadycam or a dolly…

or canon will introduce a new ultra-crop-dslr instead of an evil…
sounds crazy to me, but hey, it’s canon

THAN, not THEN.

Grammar police – adding value to every conversation.

Yes, I really like this “reference image” in the viewfinder, it should be fun.

For example, if you spot an interesting setting (or several) but wait for some action or light to appear, you just take a picture to help memorize the spot and the framing.

Just an idea out of a thousand possible applications…

Well lens based IS works quite well for stills and video, you can see how well it works for video just by activating the IS as you look through the view finder. Hence why even Sony uses a lens based IS system in their video cameras.

Well Nikon could not be considered the innovator! Their cameras are good but could never be considered innovations of the industry. They simply improve upon existing technology. While they are good at it, they are not creating much “new” technology and incorporating it in their cameras.

Canon was the first to really push good, quality, high ISO.
Canon was the first to really use good extremely fast primes and still has the fastest f/1.2
Canon Introduced IS lenses to their incredible and industry leading telephoto lenses.
The list goes on and on…

Your written English is far better than that of most native speakers here.

Just before this escalates any further, I’d like to say neither of you is experienced enough to judge any “chimpers”. Try rolling out twenty prints a week along with monthly editorial deadlines.

Uh, yeah… Because you know anything about either one of us. Don’t be ignorant.

And nothing was getting escalated. I was however, interested in why he was saying what he was saying.

…but the list does not include in-body image stabilisation, the topic of the original post. Neither Canon nor Nikon have led the way there.

but canon is leading Nikon, the only other major SLR player in the current market. Thats good enough for me!

Neither Canon nor Nikon have any DSLR using in-body image stabilisation. How can one be leading the other in that respect?

Canon has no production camera at all with sensor-shift image stabilisation, but Nikon put it in the Coolpix P90 a year ago. The fact that it is not in any of their DSLRs has nothing to do with the technical feasibility of the system–who would doubt that they know how to do it? They are the dominant players, so they can afford to delay the introduction of the system in an effort to sell their more expensive IS/VR lenses.

However, it is becoming harder and harder for them to release new cameras that have significant enough improvements over the previous generation to entice existing owners to upgrade. When they run out of other ideas (video, articulating screens, improved ISO and DR, etc.), they’ll eventually have to introduce in-body stabilisation to make their sales. They will do that last of all, because that will hurt lens sales, but as soon as one does it the other will follow immediately. It would not surprise me if they both have the system ready to go, so that they can add it to the very next model they announce if their competitor blinks first.

Well trolled, sir. Hats off to you.

Just because the drawing shows an SLR does not mean that the patent only applies to SLRs.