Sony’s $2,950 full-frame camera for drones has no screen or battery

Sony has a new tiny box camera that’s small and light enough to be sent into the sky on a drone, and it features the high-resolution 61-megapixel full-frame sensor from its A7R V camera.

He Sony ILX-LR1 It’s a new E-mount full-frame mirrorless camera that’s only slightly larger than your average deck of cards and weighs just half a pound, but it has the latest Bionz XR processor and supports 4K video up to 60fps. It’s an incredibly small package for a huge amount of imaging, but it also lacks an electronic viewfinder, a screen of any kind, a standard grip, and even a battery. Expected to launch in December, this $2,950 camera is tailor-made for high-end drone flying and specialized industrial uses, such as surveying and photogrammetric measurements.

While box cameras are nothing new, the ILX-LR1 has a particularly specialized design that puts drones first. Since it has no battery, it must rely on a drone’s external power source while flying, and it also lacks in-body image stabilization of any kind because Sony claims its absence saves valuable size and weight and pilots turn it off. anyway. And Sony should know this, as it has been testing the ILX-LR1 with professional flight systems from companies like sky fish and Event 38. (Although the company somehow overlooked its own Air Peak S1 drone, which the ILX-LR1 is not compatible with.)

This nifty little camera might not be for regular folks like you or me (made even more so by the fact that its retailers are limited to niche B2B and volume sales networks), but it looks like a pretty cool piece. clever engineering. And after splitting its A7C camera into two new models (one of which also has this 61-megapixel sensor), Sony can’t seem to stop creating new camera models for even the most specialized cases.