Canon Patent Application: Camera with Internal Tilt Movement

Canon has been exploring quite a bit of methods of doing tilt in a more automated fashion, from having the lens electronically controlled to this patent application (2024-057829) that has the tilt movement controlled inside the camera itself.

Canon in this patent demonstrates a technique that allows them to tilt the sensor while keeping the space required for the mechanism relatively small and compact. According to Canon;

It is an object of the present invention to provide a camera device that can suppress the influence of wiring on sensor tilt drive while suppressing the increase in size of the device.

Will this end up in a camera? To be honest it would be cool for a stills camera to have this. You could then turn any lens you wanted into a tilt lens, and I’m sure the same means could be used for shifting as well. It should be noted that Canon shows this off with a interchangeable lens camera body, but not what appears to be an actual camera. However, it’s been done before where Canon shows off a camera as a nondescript box in a patent application.

But before we all await Canon’s first large format camera entry – there’s a good chance that this is primarily for security and surveillance cameras. The ability to tilt the plane of focus would allow for a much deeper depth of field. For instance, if the security camera was pointing down a sidewalk, it could conceivably get faces in focus from close and far distances away from the camera, even if the lens was quite fast. If you don’t use tilt, then you have a much narrower depth of field where faces would be in focus. Not being in focus would dramatically impair facial recognition, etc.

Don’t blame me (or Canon) for this – it’s just the way the world is going is these days, whether we like it or not.

As with all patent applications, this is a peek into Canon’s research. It may never end up in an actual patent or a product.

Japan Patent Application 2024-057829

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