Canon Patent Application: Handheld Vlogging ILC

I really don't' know what to call this, except that instead of turning the camera around to take selfies and to video blog, this device allows you just to swivel the lens in different directions. It allows you to do this, and maintain the same screen and grip orientation throughout the movements.

Canon shows this patent as an ILC, and you'd think the smaller mount such as the EOS-M would fare much better here than the larger RF mount (not to mention lens size would play a factor in this device).

In Canon's own words;

In recent years, a video distribution service using a communication network such as the Internet has become widespread, and a user can upload captured video content to the video distribution service. Further, when a user shoots a moving image, it is required to shoot a moving image in a free posture in various situations and to take a moving image from various angles. As a related technique, an imaging device of Patent Document 1 has been proposed. The image pickup apparatus of Patent Document 1 makes it possible to invert the display of the display unit according to the orientation of the lens unit while rotating the lens unit with respect to the main body about one axis to switch the shooting direction.

As you can see from the below diagrams you can swivel the lens up and around to the back.  This allows for vlogging without contorting yourself or having a hinged side or top LCD.  The one problem with this though is that the hotshoe in this orientation would become useless as it swings to the underside of the hinge.  I'm not sure why you would use this movement to record yourself, moving the lens in the horizontal orientation seems to make more sense to me.

Rotating the lens to the side, however, wouldn't be a problem for this configuration.  As you can see, the hot shoe is clearly exposed in all movements.  This example would allow for a microphone to be attached and still video record yourself.  The movement seems to be nearly a full 360 degrees.

There doesn't seem to be any gimbal support for video with this device. When I first looked at the diagram I thought this was a gimbal device.  However, if the lenses are stabilized it may not be absolutely necessary. What do you think? Could this be the next vlogging camera ILC from Canon?

As I looked through this week's patents, there is just a crazy amount of patents dealing with this ILC configuration. I have never seen anything like this in the years we've been finding patents.

Canon Patent Application 2020-205481, 2020-205480, 2020-205479, 2020-205478, 2020-204655