Canon invents tilt-shift adapter for mirrorless camera – update
Canon has filed a patent application for an adapter that turns any Canon EF lens into a tilt-shift lens. The adapter that the company thinks it can make has its own processor and motors. Presumably, the adapter is intended for a mirrorless camera like the EOS M.
Adapters that bring tilt-shift to Canon lenses are already there, but they require larger medium format lenses and must be operated entirely manually. The technique Canon describes in its patent application would work hand in hand with all EF lenses. The adapter contains no optics, sits between the body and the lens and contains its own CPU.
Motors in the adapter provide the twisting and sliding movements necessary for the apparent change of perspective. In combination with a tripod, the adapter could even determine whether it is better to move the sensor in the camera body or the lens. The adapter can also use image stabilization of lenses for the movements, whereby the resulting image needs to be cropped less at the sensor level, describes Photography Bay.
Incidentally, Photography Bay assumes that the adapter will be for existing EOS cameras. but it is probably a mirrorless camera because otherwise the distance between the lens and the sensor is too great. Because with a system camera the distance between lens and camera is smaller, this offers space for an adapter. This probably concerns the use of full-frame lenses on a camera with aps-c or smaller sensor. The patent further states that Canon wants to use not only the stabilizing element in the lens as an aid, but also a moving sensor – or sensor shift. Salient detail: at the moment Canon does not yet use a stabilized sensor in its dslrs and system cameras, unlike competitors such as Sony, Olympus, Pentax and Panasonic.
Operation can be done via the menu of the camera, but the adapter itself can also be used for operation. Since it is only a patent application for the time being, it is impossible to say whether Canon is really working on the technology and when products can be expected.
Update 17:15 – adjustment that the adapter is probably intended for a system camera