[codiac2600]

Well from what I'm allowed to say and know plus these great findings I'll hopefully give you some insight. These patents are all from Pentax and are very very new so nothing old here. Have a long look folks and feel free to research these yourselves if you'd like, but I'm too lazy to fake these diagrams and such.

Ok, First here we have a new wide-angle zoom system, hence the current patent date:


Here we have a macro lens with a floating lens design and from further reading it means great than 1:1 magnification by way of adjusting the lens.


Here is a Fast Zoom Lens patent, which dunno what it really means but fast is good.


New K20D anti-shake with Z axis added.




Z axis


K200D (from the looks because it has K10D controls, but no weather sealed door plus a Canon-like wheel in the back)




Well, thats all I got right now and like I said feel free to search the US patent office yourselves and study up.

Here is what Pentax has currently lined up while everyone was taking pictures and not too many people had mentioned.

1. Signed huge deal with the largest gyroscopic corporation in order to produce a better SR (Shake Reduction) system.
2. Signed a huge deal with Japans 2nd largest semiconductor and microprocessor company.
3. Hoya verbally announced that Pentax Imaging division will be a cash cow for the corporation and will devote plenty of money to back it (thank you Bloomberg).
4. Samsung is a great friend to Pentax now and will be giving them a few resources you'll find out about come this January.
5. Pentax had a run in with Dalsa, a leading CMOS manufacturer that makes sensors for aerial photography, so think of being to take a picture of the US continent and being able to zoom in and resolve a house; amazing stuff
6. Oh boy do they have a great camera in store! Sorry, but they do have them floating around, just letting you know it's happened under the news radar.

ANything else you want to know you'll just have to wait!

[creampuff]

Wow! These are great news. Thanks for sniffing out the patent info, eye opening indeed.

[m8o]

so now I know the names, sensor type, af speed, and continuous shot speed... keep 'm come'n. Like I said in another thread, I hate waiting for surprises.

[PDL]

At the end of the 70's there was a company that produced a gyroscope that attached to the tripod mount. It used two 2 inch gyros mounted at 90 degrees. I was a method of holding the whole camera/lens system still. As I remember (and I have forgotten a lot) the picture in the add was a telephoto with a seperate L mount on the lens that held the gyro. But this is interesting - especially if they figure out how to put GPS into the system with a compass to tell which way your are pointing the lens.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[PaengBonafe]

how do you derive the FL on the lens patents? i got the aperture pretty quick.. but having a hard time on the FL

[torge]

I do not claim that I can understand such patent lingo, but it is written:

(1) ... designed for the image-plane size corresponding to the 135 (35 mm) film format ... the maximum angle-of-view at the short focal length ... is ... approximately 75.degree.

(2) ... in the case of a digital SLR camera having a smaller image plane (the imaging device), e.g., an APSC size image sensor, the angle-of-view at short focal length extremity is at most 55.degree.

so, that would be 28mm at the wide end.

Just poking around here, it is interesting
Torge

[torge]

what is the aperture?

[PaengBonafe]

for the wide angle, i got a 3.5-5.8, a 2.8 for the Macro and a 2.9 for the fast zoom.

might be wrong.. but that's what the diagram says in the full patent doc..

[torge]

and a 2.9 for the fast zoom.

from the patent with reference to DSLR:
...an angle-of-view of approximately 85.degree. at the short focal length extremity and approximately 32.degree. at the long focal length extremity...

which comes to a focal length 16-50mm,

I think we know that one
Torge

[Rorschach]

Very interesting. It certainly seems that my approach of not buying a K10D -in anticipation for the K20D- was the correct one. I can manage the wait with a little help from a K100D Super and a bunch of lenses

Best regards,
Boucicaut

[Edvinas]

Look at Foreign application dates and dates when patents were filed.

Lenses look like DA★ 16-50mm f/2.8 and DA★ 50-135mm f/2.8 to me. Macro lens patent is Tamron, not Pentax.

Anti-shake apparatus patent filed in July 1, 2005 (2004 in Japan) — that's SR used in K100D and K10D.

Camera on camera external design patent looks exactly like K10D and patent filed in Japan on 2006-01-04, in USA on 2006-07-07. So, camera is definitely K10D

Sorry, but these patents are for already existing Pentax products...

[thibs]

Mmm the soncd patents refers to Tamron and not Pentax if I read correctly ...

As for 3.5-5.8, the only known coming lens to have such aperture caracteristics is the 55-300mm consumer zoom.

[djm]

The camera external design is not the K10d flash unit but a new design that allows the pivot point to be as far back as possible thus increasing the height of the flash above the lens and helping to stop red eye. Looks to be about 25% higher - quite clever.

[blende8]

Depicting axes of a coordinate system does not mean that there is actually a movement around these axes.
I can't find any indication about z-axis rotation.
Probably just wishful thinking.

[benjikan]

As I said in an earlier post, Pentax will make some serious waves in the camera market. I have surfed the wave already and can attest to this with confidence. Perhaps for some it won't be ground breaking. It is such a subjective interpretation.

Ben