A patent from DJI has just been discovered, and it isn’t what you’d expect from the drone company. The patents point to a new DJI mirrorless camera.
The patents were first reported by DJI watcher OsitaLV on Twitter. OsitaLV found a Chinese patent application for a new mirrorless camera that he believes is meant to compete with the Sony a7 series.
At initial glance, DJI’s proposed design for this mirrorless camera might look familiar. You wouldn’t be wrong to think this — the camera looks based on Hasselblad’s X1D50c. It seems as time goes by, DJI is inching further and further away from just being a drone company. A couple of years ago, DJI released the DJI Phantom with a camera that was designed and built entirely by DJI. While the Phantom isn’t a mirrorless camera, the fact DJI had the ambition to design and build its camera itself shows its interest in making their own cameras. The DJI OSMO, DJI’s handheld gimbal and camera, and DJI’s purchase of Hasselblad in 2017 only further support that.
A new mirrorless design similar to the Hasselblad X1D
Since DJI now owns Hasselblad, it makes sense its new mirrorless camera looks like a Hasselblad camera. But what do we know about the camera right now? Not much.
Since we only have patents, we don’t know many details. Since the design looks similar to the Hasselbad X1D50c, we can only speculate based on that camera’s specs. The X1D50c has a 50MP medium format image sensor, with 3.6-inch rear touch screen, and a 3.69 million dot OLED electronic viewfinder. Maybe DJI’s camera will have similar specs to that.
Sadly, no video
This is the kicker though. DJI’s mirrorless camera likely won’t shoot video. The camera is aimed at professional photographers that want a medium format camera for shooting weddings, product photography and modeling.
DJI isn’t giving up the drones
Do not worry. DJI isn’t leaving the drone market. They still reign in that market and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. It will be interesting though to see where DJI heads in the camera market. Maybe in the future, they will make a video shooting mirrorless camera that can compete with the likes of Sony, Canon, Panasonic and Nikon.
