SonyAlphaForum spotted the US patent 8866965 which discloses a mechanism to changes the flange distance between the mount and the sensor of a camera. It’s basically the Z-shift solution we wrote about last year. This could bring two advantages:
1) Adjust the flange distance depending of the lens
2) You can focus by changing the flange distance rather than focus with the lens. For example you could autofocus with manual Leica lenses.
If you love to read deeply tech details on this just click over at freepatentsonline.com/8866965.html.
Still not sure if such a camera is really coming one day…
P.S.. Do not forget to join the new SonyAlphaForum 😉
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Contax AX. AF with MF lenses.
Likely, today’s solution could be:
1) More reliable
2) Faster
But the sheer size and weight of the parts that need to move can still be very challenging and I wouldn’t expect a particularly quiet operation. It would be nice if done well and fast enough but I reckon it could end up being more of a gimmick if it’s not “up to the expectations” of the most stringent keyboard photographers…whatever they are.
For the first point, Z shift to adapt flange distance alone….let’s wait for some of those A-mount cry babies.
Compared to the glass moved when focusing, moving a sensor might be considered pretty lightweight. And in Contax AX’s case, they were moving the whole backplate assembly, much more complicated than moving only the sensor. Let’s hope technology has caught up in almost 30 yrs
Many of the most contemporary AF lenses have small glass elements that do the focusing, especially if they are internal focusing lenses. Those that have screw focusing, done by the body, can have larger elements but they would also be likely to be focusing with the front element. Although I think my former 50mm 1.4 Canon lens was front focusing but had SSM…
A very interesting patent, I hope we shall see it in a product someday.
Such a Z-Shift only makes sense in a A99 alike body.
@Admin where are the big bang rumors? will we hear them 2 weeks before the announcement? 😛
Big bang? No….. MASSIVE KAWABUUUUUUMMM BIGA BANG rumors! 🙂
No, you will hear them exactly 2 months before 🙂
Rather MESSIVE KEWEBUUUUUUMMM BIGE BENG rumors…
That means begin to mid December…
Too long to wait. 😀
much earlier 🙂
Admin, I am thinking about buying an A7 now for 1000€ …is it worth waiting? Will prices be similar?
Thanks
There’s always going to something better around the corner. If the price is right I’d definitely pull the trigger. UK a7 prices are the lowest I’ve seen them, and any replacement isn’t going to release at current street prices. Bear in mind that the new FE body is supposedly pro, so the price point is going to be much higher.
I agree, but maybe I can get a A6000, wait for a bit, and then get the A7 at half price or the new on at the same?
Wouldn’t like to pay those 1000€ and after a few days, find the same camera for 700….quite possible. Two at the price of one!!
Probably SAR_Admin can throw some light into this.
Regards
Which means you must know what those rumours are and have some information to hand.
I wonder sometimes if Sony are paying you or giving incentives so that you keep quiet or delay rumours.
It could be possible to make a hybrid mount to attach A- and E-Mount lenses on the camera because of the movable sensor. For the A-Lenses there would be a flapping mirror for pdaf. E-Lenses could use contrast or ospdaf. I have to wake up, such a thing will not happen..
It is even possible to make Canikon lenses working on a A99 alike cameras.
With one strike, it would make discussions about mounts obsolete…
One the contrary…that “one strike” will double up the b!t ch ing around! A and E mount users unite!
If you make a hybrid, it will not only be the end of A-mount…but also of E-mount because the new H mount will be born and we would have double the b1t ch ing!
For what purpose? Aside from great macro ability, or potential AF from the sensor (like Contax AX), I hope this isn’t wasting engineering dollars for the glory of attaching native E-mount fly-by-wire lenses to my A-mount cameras.
I won’t use fly-wire on E-mount. I won’t use it on A-mount either.
Too many issues with fly-wire. Slowest turning doesn’t change focusing at all. No end stops close or far. Nice for game controllers. Sucks for lenses.
What does this actually have to do with fly by wire lenses? You don’t have to use them, do you? Let more open minded people enjoy the bodies. Those a-mount vs e-mount wars are ridiculous, why can’t we just stop it?
True, I went with Sony because I never liked those canon vs Nikon wars. now it’s the same between two mounts from the same manufacturer. People need to get a life!
The. You would like the zeiss MF 35mm and 50mm lenses…which are e-mount only.
This could make all of our lenses macro capable. I would love this.
Looks like a very expensive MILC A-Mount is coming. There is no way Sony will sell this thing for under 4K. I hope it’s 4k, and has the rumoured 46 to 51mp sensor as well.
…And you can tilt the sensor. Tilt in every lens would be great! 🙂
even if the camera could do in body t/s it would not make every lens t/s. You need a lens with an enlarged image circle to have room in the image to t/s. MF lenses on a tilt adapter would be perfect for ff.
Tilt is okay,only shift will having problem with standard image circle.
you can just crop the picture or go to an in camera crop mode > no problem
Actually, only tilt is needed, while shift can be emulated in PP (Olympus even has a patent to do that in LiveView)
For fast AF you need a pretty powerful focusing motor and a huge battery.
Even if the AF would be slower than on af lenses, it’s still better than on other af lenses. It’s still would be better than NO autofocus
🙂
Mistakes over mistakes in my post 🙁
If it is used for AF, don’t count on it being very fast as it would have to move the entire mass of the lens and mount. So it might work for static subjects, but poorly for dynamic ones. It also provides only limited focus accommodation for long focal length lenses as was found on the Contax AX which essentially achieved the same thing by moving the film plane relative to the lens mount.
Maybe, just maybe, this cold be an enabled for the much rumoured “hybrid mount”, but I rather doubt it.
The sensor moves, not the mount. That’s a huuuge difference 😉
Optically speaking moving the sensor relative to the lens mount or the lens mount relative to the sensor would produce identical result. So, no, it’s not a huge difference in what it achieves.
Of course, mechanically different in that it’s probably easier to move a sensor
(which will be lighter than the lens), although the penalty will be a
very deep camera body – the Contax AX is huge. Even there the difference might not be so much, as if there’s a mechanism to move the lens mount in an out of the body, it too will add depth unless some complex telescopic arrangement could be put in place.
If it’s just the sensor that moves, they’d have to design the body to accommodate the maximum desired flange. That offers no benefit for e-mount shooters, unless it could include ibis. Bringing af to mf lenses would be theoretically possible, but I can’t see Sony implementing it. After all, if you’re the kind of person who prefers mf lenses, af is the last thing you want.
e-mount users would benefit for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Imagine this sensor, moved, tilts, and stabilizes. And using manual focus lenses with AF is HUUUGe. The body would have to be deeper for the longer flange, but a prism is not required anymore if they can include on sensor PDAF. So overall the body could be between A99 and a7.
how would this affect lens design if used for focusing. could they be made smaller, sharper?
“SonyAlphaForum spotted the US patent 8866965”.
Eh? YOU posted that in the forum.
Who are SonyAlphaForum? Is it new and do you have a role in running it?
No, that is a different person who also created a Leica forum and a Fuji forum and was with another Sony forum that was pulled offline after a short time.
Correction: I see the same SAR admin posted that info there. Not sure if the rumor site and forum will work together or destroy each other..
The word flange is a banned word that triggers the spamprotection/ moderation filter
Not anymore apparently.
Would this “feature” a plastic mount?
So this won’t play very well with new retrofocal designs
This would ROCK the camera world!
Future A mount bodies could have a shifting sensor that moves forward in order to attach E-Mount lenses? This could ease much of the neglect A mount users have been feeling over the lack of A mount lens development. Let them use those super sharp Loxia’s for example.
I agree with some other posters that building a z shift autofocus that can move quickly enough with the weight of the sensor might be difficult. Particularly now that cameras like the A6000 have really raised the expected standard of AF speed.
I really do hope this comes to market though. Slow or not, I’d be interested in buying body that could provide AF on old manual lenses.
From a marketing perspective though, does such a thing hurt their own product sales? Sony receives no revenue from secondary market sales of old lenses. Why buy a brand new $1200 E-mount lens when you could buy 5 second hand FD primes off ebay for half the price and still have AF.
If only companies could be the hero and build the product everyone really wants, shareholders be damned. But this is not the world we live in.
The post in the forum was posted by “SAR admin”.
???
and we hear sony executive last month saying “i dont know A mount and E mount will merge in the future?”
this technology cant function to focus “old/some brand” lenses in A mount, not while still having slt
this technology wont allow to use E mount lenses on A bodies, not with the mirror still there
this was enginered to E mount, could be used to be able to mount A lenses on E bodies, with a built in adapter, of course bodies will be bigger, the size of today E bodie + adapter, but yes, could be used to focus any third lense
but for sure, this technology only has a future in E mount, and sony its only puttig money at R&D to E mount, so maybe…
1) it could bring more other brands owners jumping into E mount, allowing to use their lenses
2) sure it will come at a99 type bodies, meaning space for bigger battery, bigger image processor, bigger memory buffer, etc so it may be the new pro body A/E we expect nest year from sony
Sony needs to patent the production of money. That’s what they need right now.
This is fantastic. The possibility for the camera to achieve perfect focus with any lens, regardless of minor defects from camera or original sensor placement along z axis. This will improve IQ.
The possibility to be able to better integrate lenses into a system as mentioned here, maybe E and A mount solution. Fantastic.
Just need a full colour sensor to go with it, FF and high MP. Thanks Sony 🙂
Future E-mount lenses will then have no focusing elements?! Just like enlarger/projector lenses, which can bring down the production costs significantly.
For A-mount lenses, on sensor PDAF can do pre-focus and then let Z-shift do the Lock-on AF when tracking high speed moving objects. If that is the case, only very little space is required additionally for the legacy A-mount lenses.
Comments welcome.
Everything old is new again. This is how the Contax AX (the world’s first autofocus SLR — film!) worked back in the ’90s, adjusting the Z-plane.
This won’t work for focusing with modern lenses with internal focusing elements and many zooms, where only some element move when focusing and where all the moving groups are calculated with one distance to focal plane.
Furthermore due to much higher moving mass, the focusing will be very slow compared to IF USM lenses.
According patent description this looks like solution for adjusting flange distance on industrial cameras. I don’t expect this patent to be applied in photo cameras with big sensors…