Today Sony announced their next generation back-illuminated CMOS sensor with “RGBW Coding” that will enabling clear shooting in low light conditions: The new sensor features also a new HDR Movie function: Canon recently also filed a patent (2012-15275) for a large size back-illuminated CMOS sensor.
Last week Kodak filed a lawsuit against Fujifilm for patents infringement. This week it’s Samsung’s turn. Any guesses who is going to be sued next week? Here are both press releases – I have hyperlinked the related patents:
Olympus filed patent 2012-3077 in Japan for a 6-24mm f/2.7-6.1 (28-112mm equivalent) and a 6-30mm f/2.4-6.8 (28-140mm equivalent) lenses:
Similar to Fujifilm, Panasonic also filed a patent 2011-258729 in Japan for an organic sensor that can change the thickness of the organic film by changing the wavelength. Here is a machine generated translation of the patent description taken from the Japanese Patent Office:
Olympus filed a patent in Japan (2011-259166) for a vari-angle LCD screen that can be flipped to pretty much any camera side/angle: In addition to the US patent for an organic sensor, Fujifilm filed a similar patent in Japan (2011-253861). Here are some more details from the Japanese patent application (Google translation):
