Olympus United States Patent 7750966 discloses a…let’s say “unusual” camera concept. The goal of such an L-shaped camera is “to provide a camera enabling picture-taking with a natural feeling, without feeling awkward.”
Read the original Olympus description:
“The camera according to this invention comprises an L-shaped frame that is capable of changing the size or aspect ratio of the viewfinder by relative movement, a back-face image-pickup device for photographing an image of the eye of the photographer, and a photographing optical system for forming the image of the subject image to the internal CCD, analyzes the image captured by the back-face image-pickup device and calculates the distance and direction to the eye of the photographer from the center of the viewfinder, and based on the calculated information and the size or aspect ratio information of the viewfinder, the photographer performs optical zooming or shifting of the photographing optical system, or performs electronic zooming or shifting by cropping the taken image by use of the CCD, in order for the range that the photographer observed via the viewfinder to become the photographing range.”
Hmmm, don’t know what to think about!
7 Responses
Sounds very interesting for me. As I understand you simply watch trough the frame.
If you want wider angle you move your eye close to frame and if you want tele you move you eye further and camera should capture what you see through the frame. If camera will be able to shift sensor position then it could be really cool 🙂
I’d have to see this in action to be convinced. Sounds like it could be buggy to me – solving a problem that doesn’t really exist. since the advent of live view. Also, does any real photographer really use digital zooming?
I think this falls into the “WTF were they thinking?!?” category…
Patent is from 2004.
this sounds very interesting and i can also image this to work well!
cool stuff!
This is an interesting point and shoot camera. If you read the Pdf linked, you can see that the camera is super small tube and that the framing guide is an add on. If they can get it synchd correctly this could be fun, but so far from the traditional, I am not too sure how well it sell.
The sensor and lens seem limited.
What we really need is a camera that will calculate what we are looking at, you blink (like Yes Man) and it takes a photo. 😉