ELECTRIC CAMERA

• US 20140232915A1
• Filed: 04/29/2014
• Published: 08/21/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 01/11/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Maxell, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi Consumer Electronics Company Limited (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Inventors: Nakano, Takahiro, Nishimura, Ryuji, Kinugasa, Toshiro
• Granted Patent: US 9,100,604 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/302
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2209/045 using mosaic colour filter
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/63 by using electronic viewfinders
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/68 for stable pick-up of the scene, e.g. compensating for camera body vibrations
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/6812 based on additional sensors, e.g. acceleration sensors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/6842 by controlling the scanning position, e.g. windowing
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/843 Demosaicing, e.g. interpolating colour pixel values
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/133 including elements passing panchromatic light, e.g. filters passing white light
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/134 based on three different wavelength filter elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/71 Charge-coupled device [CCD] sensors; Charge-transfer registers specially adapted for CCD sensors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/766 comprising control or output lines used for a plurality of functions, e.g. for pixel output, driving, reset or power

Abstract

An electric camera includes an image sensing device with a light receiving surface having N vertically arranged pixels and an arbitrary number of pixels arranged horizontally, N being equal to or more than three times the number of effective scanning lines M of a display screen of a television system, a driver to drive the image sensing device to vertically mix or cull signal charges accumulated in individual pixels of K pixels to produce, during a vertical effective scanning period of the television system, a number of lines of output signals which corresponds to 1/K the number of vertically arranged pixels N of the image sensing device, K being an integer equal to or less than an integral part of a quotient of N divided by M, and a signal processing unit having a function of generating image signals by using the output signals of the image sensing device.

Claims

1. An electric camera comprising:

an image sensing device with a light receiving surface having N vertically arranged pixels and an arbitrary number of pixels arranged horizontally, N being equal to or more than three times the number of effective scanning lines M of a display screen of a television system;

a driver to drive the image sensing device to vertically mix or cull signal charges accumulated in individual pixels of every K pixels to produce a number of lines of output signals which corresponds to the number of effective scanning lines M, K being at least one of integers equal to or less than an integral part of a quotient of N divided by M; and

a signal processing unit to generate image signals by using the out put signals of the image sensing device.