Canon Patent Application for Slow Shutter Bracketing

By admin, on June 25th, 2025

canon patent image Canon’s new patent for slow-shutter bracketing, aka Live ND Filter powered by AI, could make long-exposure photography a breeze. Instead of tweaking your shutter speed, for each shot, the camera would automatically fire off a series of images at different slow-speed settings in one go. Think light trails streaming behind cars or water flowing silky-smooth over rocks, this feature would handle the adjustments behind the scenes—so you get a variety of creative effects in a single burst, automatically saved in your camera. We can expect the arrival of the feature in Canon’s future cameras.

Patent overview

[Publication number] P2025093064
[Release date] 2025-06-23
[Title of Invention] Imaging device and its control method and program
[Application date] 2023-12-11
[Applicant]
[Identification number] 000001007
[Name or company name] Canon Inc.
An imaging device capable of obtaining a plurality of images with different slow shutter expressions in response to a single shooting instruction, and a control method and program for the same are provided.
[Background technology]
[0002]
As a photography technique using long exposure, there is slow shutter photography, which captures the movement of a moving subject such as a waterfall or water flowing in a river. In slow shutter photography, the expression and impression of the photograph that can be taken changes depending on the length of the exposure time, so it is necessary to repeatedly shoot until a photo that is satisfactory to the user is captured. However, when repeatedly shooting while changing the exposure time, it is not possible to record images with different slow shutter expressions for the same scene.
[0003]
On the other hand, there are conventional techniques that realize pseudo long-second exposure. For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a method of synthesizing images taken repeatedly at specific intervals to achieve a specific brightness. Patent Document 2 discloses a method of recording images with different exposures of the same scene as bracket images by repeatedly aligning and additively synthesizing multiple taken images and storing the images.
[0005]
However, in the prior art of Patent Document 1, the brightness of the image changes, so images with different slow shutter expressions cannot be recorded. Also, in the prior art of Patent Document 2, the positioning is performed between the captured images, so images with slow shutter expressions that capture the movement of a moving subject cannot be recorded.
[Patent Document 1] JP 2022-125117 A (OM Digital)
[0006]
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above-mentioned problems, and aims to provide an imaging device and a control method and program thereof that can obtain multiple images with different slow shutter expressions with a single shooting instruction.
EFFECTS OF THE PRESENT EMBODIMENTS
[0008]
According to the present invention, a single shooting instruction can obtain a plurality of images with different slow shutter expressions.