Tag Archives: Patents

Sony viewfinder patent shows new camera design

By PR admin | Published: October 15, 2010

Patent Application 20100259666 from Sony is about a transmissive liquid crystal panel that could be implemented in the optical finder and can provide superimposed indication of various parameters, such as AF area: The patent includes also diagrams of what appears to be a Sony camera body:

Posted in Sony | Tagged | 4 Comments

The latest patents applications

By PR admin | Published: October 4, 2010

Olympus filed a patent application in Japan for a new 26-100mm (35mm equivalent) f/1.8-2.4 lens: Patent application: 2010-217478, filled on 03/17/2009 Focus length: 6.06-18.76 Fno: 1.85-2.39 (aperture) Angle of view: 78.41-27.50° Back focus: 7.33-9.19mm Length 60.49-62.17mm Zoom 3.88x Apple attempts to patent a smarter camera flash – the patent is about a flash redirector that will let […]

Posted in Apple, Canon, Olympus | Tagged | 3 Comments

Olympus patents

By PR admin | Published: August 29, 2010

Olympus filed an interesting patent in Japan for removing water drops from a lens by using a vibrating front element: Here are another four patents applications for the following Olympus m4/3 lenses (also filed in Japan): M.Zuiko 17mm F2.8 (already available) M.Zuiko 20mm F2.8

Posted in Olympus | Tagged | 20 Comments

Canon patent for EF 28-70mm F2.8 USM lens

By PR admin | Published: August 11, 2010

Not sure why Canon filed that patent two years ago, since the old Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8 L USM lens was replaced by the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. The details: Patent Publication No. 2010-145831 published 2010/07/01 filled 2008/12/19 Embodiment 3 focus distance f=28.7-68.00mm Fno=2.92 angle of view 74.02-35.30 image circle 43.28mm lens length 177.91-168.98mm back […]

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Sony patents honeycomb image sensor

By PR admin | Published: August 3, 2010

Sony filed a patent for a honeycomb type image sensor. The sensor’s photodiodes are shaped like hexagons (regular sensors have square photodiodes) which should improve the sensor’s performance. Few years ago Fuji worked on a honeycomb type “Super CCD” sensor. The Google translation is sufficient to get a basic idea about this patent: Patent Publication […]

Posted in Sony | Tagged | 25 Comments

Olympus patent uses eye’s position and adjustable aspect ratio to frame pictures

By PR admin | Published: July 9, 2010

The idea behind this patent filed by Olympus is that the photographer can easily adjust the aspect ratio of the viewfinder with an adjustable frame: In addition, the patent suggest an eye detection device on the back of the camera that will follow the photographer’s eyes (similar to the current blink-detection technology) and will make the […]

Posted in Olympus | Tagged | 3 Comments

Patents from Pentax and Canon

By PR admin | Published: June 19, 2010

First in line are some Pentax patents of what appears to be three lenses with a Micro-Four-Thirds mount: Pentax-MFTS 17mm F2.8 AL Pentax-MFTS 17mm F2.0 AL Pentax-MFTS 14mm F2.8 AL And the drawings: The next patent is from Canon and is for a “Imaging-device cleaning apparatus” which has the shape of  a lens and attaches […]

Posted in Canon, Pentax | Tagged | 2 Comments

Two interesting patents from Sony and Canon

By PR admin | Published: June 5, 2010

Update: I forgot that Canon also filed a patent for a touchscreen DSLR few months ago. The first patent is about a touchscreen DSLR from Sony: PhotographyBay has the whole story, here is a part of the patent application: The touch panel 332 functions as a touched position detector that detects the touched position where […]

Posted in Canon, Sony | Tagged | 7 Comments

Interesting Patents from Sony and Panasonic

By PR admin | Published: April 26, 2010

Patent Application 20100091128 from Sony is for an imager with optical instead of electrical signal out. From the summary: “A solid-state imager includes a pixel unit for converting incident light into an electrical signal, a substrate bearing the pixel unit formed thereon, an analog-to-digital converter, formed on the substrate, for converting a signal read from the pixel unit into a digital signal, an optical communication unit, arranged on […]

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The latest Panasonic patents

By PR admin | Published: March 16, 2010

Panasonic patent for what appears to be a GH2 model with a metal body: “The main claim of this patent is the ‘heat radiators and heat conductors’ inside a ‘metal body’ which remove heat from around the image processing unit and the CMOS sensor itself. The CMOS image sensor 110 is able to acquire high-resolution […]

Posted in Panasonic | Tagged | 2 Comments

Interesting patents from Sony and Panasonic

By PR admin | Published: February 25, 2010

Sony half-mirror/Pellix-mirror patent (US Patent Application 20100045853) – this patent will allow AF during video recording/live view: “There is proposed a digital camera which is capable of simultaneously performing phase difference detecting AF by a phase difference detecting AF sensor and live view in which time-series images for determining a picture composition are electronically displayed […]

Posted in Panasonic, Sony | Tagged | 2 Comments

Latest Olympus patents

By PR admin | Published: May 24, 2009

Patents are difficult to read unless you have a PhD. Not all patents make it to the production line, but it is still very interesting to see where the R&D effort is spent. Here are the latest Olympus patent applications made public just few days ago: CAMERA HAVING A DUST-PROOFING MEMBER THAT IS VIBRATED TO REMOVE DUST: A camera includes […]

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