Could Sony buy Kodak patents? Improved manual focus for a99?

In using my Sony a99, so far I haven't had great luck with the manual focus. The focus peaking helps focus on a person's hair better than it helps focus on her eyes, so people shot indoors at f/2.8 tend to come out soft when I get them outlined well with focus peaking.

The focus enlargement is very accurate, but it is slow process. Focus enlargement doesn't toggle on and off at the push of a button the way zooming into a picture during playback works, you have to press the button multiple times. And then the enlarged image fills the entire LCD and the entire viewfinder, so you can't see the rest of the shot for framing until you get out of that mode.

The amazing thing is that my mother has an old Kodak P&S camera that handles manual focus much better than the a99! The Kodak's manual focus enlargement starts automatically when you start adjusting the focus, and enlarges just the center of the image, so you can compose shots as well as seeing the focus accurately, all in the same display! Here's a shot from Steve's Digicams review of another Kodak model.

Manual focus assist enlarges just the center of the image.

This is clearly a problem in other Sony cameras. The RX1 preview on here on dpreview says "However, precise focusing requires magnified live view, which slows the process as you can't confirm composition and focus at the same time." I wonder if Sony could bid on whatever patents Kodak has on this technology, and add it to future models or future firmware updates to current cameras?

-jeremy

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Jeremy Birn