Electronic camera

• US 20020140845A1
• Filed: 03/27/2002
• Published: 10/03/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fujifilm Corporation (Fujifilm Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Fuji Photo Film Co Limited (Fujifilm Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Nishino, Naoyuki, Yoshida, Yutaka, Kotani, Takaaki
• Granted Patent: US 7,064,788 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/371
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/73 by influencing the exposure time
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/74 by influencing the scene brightness using illuminating means
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/531 by controlling rolling shutters in CMOS SSIS

Abstract

An electronic camera is provided with an image pickup sensor, a flash repeating an emission of a flashlight plural times according to a light emission timing pulse which repeats plural times, a photographic lens leading photographic light to an image pickup sensor in which the photographic light is composed of external light and a reflected light of a flashlight emitted by the flash, and an MPU generating a light emission timing pulse according to a timing based on a generation timing of an action timing pulse and controlling a timing for emitting a flash light emitted by the flash.

Claims

1. An electronic camera comprising:

an image pickup sensor having a plurality of photo detector element lines respectively composed of a plurality of arranged photo detector elements, in accordance with each of a plurality of action timing pulses which is different for each of the photo detector element lines, receiving light by each of the photo detector elements that compose each of the photo detector element lines corresponding to each of the action timing pulses for only a predetermined shutter time, and outputting one after another signals corresponding to the respective photo detector elements according to a quantity of the light received during the shutter time;

a flash repeating an emission of a flashlight a plurality of times according to a light emission timing pulse repeating a plurality of times;

a photographic lens leading photographic light to the image pickup sensor in which the photographic light is composed of external light and a reflected light of the flashlight emitted from the flash; and

a light emission controller generating the light emission timing pulse at a timing based on a generation timing of the action timing pulse, and controlling a light emission timing of the flashlight emitted by the flash.

2. The electronic camera according to claim 1, wherein the light emission controller generates the light emission timing pulse at intervals of length integer times including once or 1/integer times as long as that of generation intervals of the action timing pulse.

3. The electronic camera according to claim 1 further comprises a monitor unit monitoring a quantity of the flashlight emitted by the flash,

wherein the light emission controller controls the flashlight so that the same quantity of flashlight is repeatedly emitted a plurality of times, based on monitoring of the quantity of light performed by the monitor unit.

4. The electronic camera according to claim 3, wherein the light emission controller controls a pulse width of a light emission timing pulse repeating a plurality of times, based on monitoring of the quantity of light performed by the monitor unit, so that the same quantity of flashlight is repeatedly emitted a plurality of times.