Canon working on touchscreen DSLR

Posted on 4 Dec 2009 at 16:49

Canon filed a patent earlier this year containing illustrations which clearly depict a touchscreen interface on a DSLR body, suggesting that the firm might be getting ready to release a touchscreen digital SLR camera.

The 13-page patent, originally found by Photography Bay, doesn't describe how the touchscreen might work, but it does discuss how accidental touches on the screen could be prevented.

After registering which eye you use for the viewfinder, the camera will detect when your eye is at the viewfinder, and will disable one part of the touchscreen (either on the left or right hand side) to prevent face contact from being registered as touches.

The patent also points out that you'll be able to control functions such as aperture and shutter speed using vertical and horizontal gestures respectively. It's unclear how this is going to give more control than current solutions though, as physical dials are going to be more accurate than any touchscreen will ever be.

We do see potential benefits when it comes to weather proofing. A camera without dials will undoubtedly be more weather proof than one with dials, although Canon's current semi-pro and professional DSLRs are already well protected against dust and moisture. There's also the problem of registering touches when the screen is wet - the patent doesn't go into detail on that.

However, we see this as more of a consumer feature that'll be introduced on lower-end DSLRs in the xxxD family. After all, Canon's first touchscreen camera was the IXUS 200 IS and we expect the interface to be fairly similar to that.

You can read the full patent here

Author: Tim Smalley

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