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Canon patent suggests boxy cinema camera is back on the cards

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Box shaped cinema cameras are not a new idea. We’ve seen a number of them over the years from companies like Panasonic with the BGH1 and BS1H, as well as the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera. It’s also a pretty major design feature of just about every camera from RED, too. We’ve also seen boxy cameras from Canon in the form of the ME200S-SH, but that’s designed for broadcast, it’s not a cinema camera, and it’s not RF mount.

The idea of a boxy Canon cinema camera has been around since at least 2019, but nothing ever seems to have come from it. Now, though, a new patent appears to show some potential development on a boxy Canon EOS Cinema camera. In fact, compared to the 2019 patent, it looks like it’s been developed a lot. There’s no news on when (or if) we’ll hear an actual release, but it looks very promising.

RED slammed for “DESTROYING the camera industry” with patent trolling

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RED seems to have been fraught with controversy pretty much since they first launched way back in 2005. The big issue at the moment – and for most of the last few years – has been their patents covering raw video. It’s a long drawn out topic that’s currently being fought out between RED and Nikon after Nikon’s inclusion of N-RAW in the Nikon Z9. Nikon’s disputing it, seemingly arguing that RED shouldn’t have been granted in the first place.

Well, now another voice has entered the fray, Theo Browne from t3.gg, with his opinion on what’s going on. He posted the video on his second channel, Theo Rants, stating that while RED was one of the early pioneers of 4K digital video, they’re now actively in the process of destroying the camera industry. A pretty strong accusation!

RED has been granted a new patent covering Compressed RAW in all video-capable devices including smartphones

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The words “RED” and “patent” are pretty familiar bedfellows. They’ve used their raw video patents to strongarm every other camera manufacturer from being able to implement raw video in their camera without RED’s approval (and a hefty fee), even if those companies have developed their own raw video technologies. Now, they’ve filed – and been granted – a new patent over compressed raw video.

The new US patent number 11,503,294, joints three other RED patents relating to compressed raw video (8,872,933, 9,479,749 and 9,787,878), but this new one seems to encompass devices other than just cinema cameras. In fact, pretty much any device that’s potentially capable of capturing compressed raw video, including smartphones and even sensor technologies they don’t own or use – like Sigma’s Foveon.

Nikon is trying to invalidate RED’s raw video patent, arguing it shouldn’t have been granted in the first place

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It’s no secret that RED is very protective of its patents, particularly the one covering the internal recording of compressed raw video. They’ve pursued it pretty relentlessly over the years, stifling the competition and probably setting back camera development by quite a few years. DJI and Kinefinity are rumoured to have removed their internal raw capabilities over RED’s threats. More recently, however, RED’s sights have been aimed towards Nikon.

Nikon announced in April that the Nikon Z9 was going to gain internal 12-Bit ProRes RAW and 8K 12-Bit N-RAW in a firmware update. The very next month, RED sued them over patent infringement claims as a result. In September, Nikon denied that they’d done so and now we know why. They’re claiming RED should’ve never been granted the patent in the first place and this video from FrameVoyager summarises the whole saga in probably the best way I’ve seen so far.

Canon patents smart selfie stick that automatically adjusts your composition

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Canon has filed yet another interesting patent: a gadget of the past and the future at the same time. Yes, it’s a selfie stick – but on the next level.

While the selfie stick is so 2014, Canon’s new patent adds an interesting twist to the gadget I thought we all forgot. It comes with a built-in camera and it automatically controls the focal length, as well as the length and angle of the stick itself.

Nikon denies RED’s infringement accusations, ready to prove it in court

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Earlier this year, RED filed a lawsuit against Nikon blaming them for illegally copying their video compression patent. Nikon announced the new version 2.0 firmware for the Nikon Z9, and RED claimed that Nikon illegally infringed on seven patents that deal with “a video camera that can be configured to highly compress video data in a visually lossless manner.”

However, Nikon isn’t ready to give in without a fight. The company recently answered to RED’s accusations, claiming that they deny every allegation of the infringement. And from Nikon’s statement, it appears that they’re ready to prove their claims in court and challenge RED’s lawsuit.

Canon has patented an internal liquid cooling system for mirrorless cameras

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Well, this is a not unexpected patent filing, really. With all of the overheating issues surrounding the EOS R5 and EOS R6 bodies on release, it’s obvious Canon has heat issues. Even though firmware updates have improved it somewhat, their existing passive cooling isn’t really great. The EOS R5c solves the overheating issue with an active fan cooling system that makes the camera pretty chunky, but can Canon do better?

It looks like they want to, as a new patent application from Canon describes a liquid cooling system for mirrorless cameras. This one, though, shouldn’t make your camera all that much bigger. It’s a pretty interesting idea which uses a magnetic cooling fluid. This is pumped through the camera by magnetic fields. So, it’s not the typical sort of pump we’d find in other liquid-cooled devices, like desktop PCs.

Canon patents a bunch of cinema lenses including 40-100mm f/1.5, 18-45mm f/1.5 and 70-210mm f/2.5

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Well, this is interesting. Canon patents new lens designed all the time, but these days, it’s typically in relation to RF mount lenses targeted specifically towards photography. In this case, though, it looks like Canon’s filed patents for several lenses that appear to actually be cinema lenses. The big giveaway is in the opening description, referring specifically to “Super 35 format” rather than APS-C.

The new lenses look pretty interesting, too, and may potentially upset the balance of common staples like the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 and 50-100mm f/1.8 Art series lenses commonly used for video due to their wide aperture and focal length range. The patent actually mentions a number of different lens designs, with various focal ranges and maximum apertures of between f/1.5 and f/2.5.

Canon publishes patents for a very compact 28-70mm f/2.8 zoom lens

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Canon has published a patent for two new zoom lens in the 28-70mm f/2.8 and 28-60mm f/2.8 focal length ranges. What makes them particularly interesting, though, is how tiny they are, for zooms with such wide aperture zooms, with both coming in at a little over 105mm long at the shorter end of their focal length limit of ~28mm. Even at their maximum zooms of 60mm and 67.9mm, they still only hit 132.38mm and 138.40mm respectively, making them very compact indeed.

The “Problem to be solved”, according to the Asobinet’s quote from the patent is “to provide a zoom lens having a short total length and a small size but having high optical performance”. And it suggests that thanks to recent development in cameras – namely, Canon’s gone mirrorless – it’s now possible to create a zoom lens of this focal length range and wide aperture that meets these parameters.

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