New Olympus patent allows camera to detect water splashes

Olympus has patented a new shooting mode that would make a camera to automatically capture a photo when it detects a water splash.

Companies are constantly patenting new products as well as new technologies. Sometimes they are great and should be implemented on the market as soon as possible. However, sometimes they are defined as odd.

One patent that falls into the latter category is Olympus’ latest work and it is describing a new shooting mode that would capture a photo as soon as it detects a water splash.

Olympus has patent a new camera mode that triggers the shutter when it detects a water splash.

Olympus patents shooting mode that triggers a camera upon detecting a water splash

This new Olympus patent is more complex then it looks like. However, in simple terms, the camera will analyze a scene and it will search for sudden changes of the water surface. Once it determines that something or someone is making splashes in the water, then it will capture a photo.

The sketches used in the patent description are showing a kid in the water. This means that the company is betting that parents would welcome the feature as they would be able to capture some of the precious moments in their kid’s life.

Although the system will be rather complicated, the idea behind the patent is pretty straightforward. A water splash will be considered a sudden upward motion of the water surface. As stated above, the detection of this occurring will trigger the camera.

New Olympus patent switches camera to high-speed 240fps mode when it sees water

It is worth mentioning that the details are rather scarce at this point. The patent description says that the Olympus camera will also be able to detect water when recording videos. When it does, the device will have its frame rate increased to 240fps.

We may be facing a new way of shooting high-speed videos and the good thing is that it will not be limited to water splashes. Popping a balloon is also mentioned, therefore the company may be working on a new high-speed camera that can detect all sorts of sudden changes in a scene.

For some reason, the description is mentioning 4K videos and the ability to take a frame out of a 4K video. This appears to be a new Tough-series camera, so Olympus might be developing a ruggedized 4K camera.

Unfortunately, these are all based on a patent with very few explanations provided, so it is too early to make any assumptions.