Originally posted by codiac2600 Man is Pentax a total genius machine!
I've been searching the patent offices again and they are just blowing up with new stuff and some of it is really nuts! I'm amazed these guys aren't part of the Dyson vacuum company or something.
-A shake reduction system for a full frame sensor. Huzzah, apparently they have an idea to get shake reduction even when the image is exposed to every pixel and every line! WOW
-A sensor that has a light to help clean it! Brilliant!
-Shake reduction for live view! Brilliant! So now when you view your live view image it won't rattle!
-Sensor to take you directly into continuous firing mode... wait, so you start rifling off some shots in single shot and the camera knows and switches you directly to continuous mode! Crap thats amazing!
-AF tracking using a combination of locking focus, tracking and combining that tracking with contrast control focus and a sensor to calculate movement... 3-dimensional focus tracking! PLEASE PENTAX PLEASE!!!! My god that would rock in a Pentax camera!
-Preview in the viewfinder! Yes! another big please!
-Low light AF range finding ability??? Not sure but the claim is to give the camera a rangefinding ability in low light to assist AF. I'm confused, but is sounds kosher.
-Battery grip tha contains extra memory! Huzzah! Now we have PC expandability in the grip. Patent talks about putting extra buffer memory in the grip allowing faster image capture rate.
I shall add all of those to my wish list on Pentax cameras to come!
I might be the odd man out, but am I the only one who's most interested in SR with full-frame sensors?
That's one of the main criticisms some people who doubt in-body SR have, that there isn't much room for the sensor to shake in when it comes to full-frame sensors. The SR for live view is there with the E-510, though it requires holding down a button to do so. To have SR active all the time in live view without need to hold down a button would be great. What would be a real achievement is SR in the viewfinder itself, and would silence another criticism being leveled at in-body SR.
Of course, the other patents look good. Better sensor cleaning would be great (a lot of D3 shipments seem to have dust problems from the get-go), better AF tracking would be a big boon to action photographers, anything to help low-light AF would be nice, the grip having buffer memory sounds great, making better use of the space there, and preview in the viewfinder itself is really nice.
I'm pretty sure I'd be turning off the auto-switching to continuous firing, though.
Wait, any chance the preview in the viewfinder made it to the K20D? The K20D-in-the-wild-spotter did mention that the photographer using the K20D never took his eye off the viewfinder (at least, that's how I understood the term "chimping").
I hope Pentax gets these technologies in their cameras soon. These are all good photographic aids, as well as unique features compared to the big two.