Canon Patent Application: Hybrid Rangefinder Viewfinder

This is an interesting patent application that those that have used Fuji's hybrid viewfinders are well used of.  This patent application from Canon describes a hybrid viewfinder which is an optical and electronic viewfinder.

It would also have the ability to switch to fully electronic, full optical and hybrid as machine translated and described below.

In the image pickup device, the function of the sight and the function of the electronic viewfinder are realized by using different display devices, so that the image pickup device becomes large. Therefore, the present invention   presents a small display device capable of switching between a sighting device and an electronic viewfinder.

An image in which an image from the objective window and an image displayed on the image display element are superimposed can be visually recognized.

Canon also mentions that it could also use Eye Control focus to move what they say is the "image", but in the diagrams, they do not show the internal mechanical and optical characteristics of eye control focus, so I suspect it's an afterthought to the design.

Canon uses an electronically controlled mirror to control what is displayed to the user.

In the above image figure (a) shows the mirror semi-transparent and figure b) shows the mirror fully reflective - allowing Canon to switch between optical and hybrid easiliy.

Could we ever see this in a Canon small RF camera? It's really hard to say, but it's an interesting design.

Japan Patent Application 2022-023783