Canon Patents Vibrating Shutter Button

While features like lighted buttons have slowly become a bit more popular in the industry, haptic feedback has been largely ignored, despite being an extremely common feature in other technology. However, that might change eventually, as a Canon patent for a vibrating shutter button has appeared.

The patent features a design for a simple vibration mechanism under the shutter button of a camera. 

The patent application describes the motivation for the system as arising from the issue of mirrorless cameras being so quiet that it can sometimes be difficult to know when one has actually taken a picture when using the electronic shutter. On one hand, one could simply turn on the confirmation sound, but for situations in which silence is needed, this is an interesting alternative.

Of course, most cameras show the capture of an image in such situations through some sort of visual indication, such as a flashing box in the viewfinder, so this does feel a bit like a solution in search of a problem, but I am all for experimentation in implementing standard technology from the larger electronics realm. Whether we will see it in an actual consumer device remains to be seen, but it is an interesting concept.