Tag Archives: Patents

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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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