where there’s smoke there’s fire

Mirrorless camera with a mirror?

This time the patent drawings are interesting because they reveal the full glory of the EVIL concept, incl. the electronic viewfinder, which appears to have a… mirror. My guess here is that the mirror is used to magnify the view from the finder:

The mirror could explain also this drawing from another patent that described the EVIL mount – this is not really a prism as initially thought, but a mirror as a part of the EVF:

Back to the patent: the Google translation is again not very accurate, but is enough to understand that this patent is for a protective mount cover (that automatically covers the mount once the lens is removed):

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Based on previous Nikon’s patent applications, the initial estimation of the sensor in the upcoming EVIL camera was 17mm in diagonal (image circle). For comparison the m4/3 sensor is 21.6 mm. This news was a bit disappointing, but now there is hope. Few weeks ago Thom Hogan and [NR] forum member JonnyApple suggested that the Nikon may be obfuscating their designs in some of their patent applications. For example: look at figure 35 (page 36) from patent application 20090257125 (filed in the US) for the 14mm f/2.8 EVIL lens:

If you compare the above lens design with drawing 19 from patent 2010-072276 below (filed in Japan, no direct link available) you will notice that they are identical:

The interesting part is that the Japanese patent is for a 23.65mm DX lens (28.4mm in diagonal). It’s basically a 1.65x scaled up version of the lens patent filed in the US. Which are now the correct numbers? Is Nikon really obscuring the real calculations? I don’t know, but a DX size EVIL camera sounds much better and may explain why Nikon is taking their time on that project.

If we assume that the EVIL sensor will be DX, we have to revisit also all previously discussed EVIL lenses and re-calculate the focal length (after the break, updated):

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