IMAGE PICKUP APPARATUS

• US 20110181754A1
• Filed: 01/10/2011
• Published: 07/28/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: OM Digital Solutions Corporation
• Original Assignee: Olympus Imaging Corporation (Olympus Corporation)
• Inventors: IWASAKI, Hiroaki
• Granted Patent: US 8,553,139 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/230.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/73 by influencing the exposure time
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/53 Control of the integration time

Abstract

The present invention is an image pickup apparatus including an image pickup device having an image pickup plane on which pixels are two-dimensionally arranged, a mechanical rear curtain shutter that runs along the image pickup plane to control passage/shielding of light, a system control section that divides the image pickup plane into a plurality of pixel groups along the running direction ahead of running of the mechanical rear curtain shutter and collectively resets charge of all pixels in one pixel group sequentially at timing per pixel group according to running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter, and an image processing section that corrects a signal level of an image signal read from the image pickup device to approximate to an image signal obtained when the pixels have a same exposure time based on the running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter and reset timing for each pixel group.

Claims

1. An image pickup apparatus comprising:

a photographing lens that forms a subject image;

an image pickup device having an image pickup plane on which pixels for accumulating an amount of charge corresponding to a light quantity of light received via the photographing lens are two-dimensionally arranged;

a mechanical rear curtain shutter that runs along the image pickup plane to move from a state in which light from the photographing lens reaches the image pickup plane to a shaded state;

a reset section that divides the image pickup plane into a plurality of pixel groups along the running direction ahead of running of the mechanical rear curtain shutter and collectively resets charge of all pixels included in one pixel group sequentially at timing per pixel group according to running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter; and

an image processing section that corrects a signal level of an image signal read from the image pickup device so as to approximate to an image signal obtained when the pixels have a same exposure time based on the running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter and reset timing for each pixel group by the reset section.

2. The image pickup apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a correction coefficient calculation section that calculates a correction coefficient based on running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter and reset timing per pixel group by the reset section,

wherein the image processing section corrects a signal level based on the correction coefficient.

3. The image pickup apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a control section that determines whether or not a set shutter speed is less than a predetermined threshold, causes the image processing section, upon determining that the shutter speed is less than the threshold, to correct the signal level or causes the image processing section, upon determining that the shutter speed is equal to or above the threshold, to stop correcting the signal level.

4. The image pickup apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the reset section sequentially performs reset per pixel group at timing approximate to running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter when the set shutter speed is 0.