CanonNews / Monday, December 30, 2019

Canon Patent Application: IBIS in Powershots and EOS-M5 Mark II

Thanks to one of our sharp eyed readers, we have a patent application for you detailing IBIS in Canon's much smaller cameras. The translation to english on this patent application seems rather difficult, but from what I can gather, IBIS + IS is discussed in this patent. So all these embodiments use both lens and sensor stabilization.

As the shake correction unit, a first image blur correcting means for moving the optical element for forming an object image, the second image blur correction means for moving the imaging device to image the object image

What this patent actually is, is that with smaller cameras, the actual stabilization will cause vibration because the sensor and optical elements are moving, and that will then result in more shake, which then gets compensated, and basically you have a runaway system with the smaller and lighter cameras because of the sensor and optical element mass. So what Canon is doing is finding a way to reduce the vibration caused by the IS units.

Now usually the images are illustrations to assist with supporting the patent application, but it's obvious that Canon is clearly looking at adding IBIS now to it's mirrorless and compact cameras. The image for the powershot appears to be a G1X Mark IV body or perhaps the G1X Mark V is what we are seeing there. Canon also discusses in this patent application is a camera in which I would certainly love to see, which appears to be a Canon M5 Mark II with IBIS + IS. This is specifically mentioned for the EOS-M camera described;

The control unit 115 controls the lens shake control via the image stabilization drive unit 1019 and the sensor drive unit 127 in accordance with the lens-side pitch and the shift position in the pitch / yaw direction calculated by the yaw image stabilization calculation units 1021a and 1021b. The shift positions of the unit 1018 and the sensor anti-vibration unit 130 are controlled. Thus, an image stabilizing operation for correcting image shake is performed.

The patent application describes in very exact details the method of manufacturing said camera, which means that Canon is far along the process of delivering a Powershot and EOS-M cameras with IBIS.

Could this be why the M6 came out first, and the M5 Mark II has not appeared yet and Canon is curiously silent about it? It certainly could be that Canon is looking at Sony's APS-C models and deciding to mimic the cameras, where the flagship has IBIS, but the lower end units do not.

Japan Patent Application 2019-219650

Edit: it's been pointed out to us that we have horribly misread / miss-interpreted this patent application. The patent application seems to be dealing with defeating the effects of vibration to the image stabilization systems when vibrating haptic feedback is added to a small camera. It's confusing because Canon uses the term anti-virbrating a lot in it's publications as image stablization.

We apologize for the error and will strive to do better in our reporting