Sony is making a $2,950 screenless, battery-less full-frame camera for drones

The Sony ILX-LR1 camera with a lens attached, on a white background.
The camera isn’t much bigger than the E-mount itself. | Image: Sony

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

The Sony ILX-LR1 is a new E-mount full-frame mirrorless camera that’s only a bit larger than an average deck of playing cards and weighs just half a pound, yet it has the latest Bionz XR processor and supports 4K video up to 60 fps. That’s an incredibly small package for a lot of imaging output, but it also lacks an electronic viewfinder, a screen of any sort, a standard handgrip, and even a battery. This $2,950 camera, expected to launch in December, is tailor-made for flying on high-end drones and specialty industrial uses — like surveying and…

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