Patent ID: 11953541
Assignee: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  B  H | IPC B  G  H

Claim 10:
11. An image capturing apparatus comprising: an image sensor that comprises pixels that are arranged in rows and in columns and that include respective photoelectric converters, and performs an image capturing operation for reading out signals of the pixels; a lifetime estimating unit that obtains remaining lifetime information on the image sensor; and a driving control unit that controls drive of the image sensor,
wherein
the image sensor performs the image capturing operation multiple times, and
the lifetime estimating unit obtains the remaining lifetime information after the image capturing operation is performed multiple times,
in a case where the remaining lifetime information represents a first length, the driving control unit drives the image sensor in a first condition,
in a case where the remaining lifetime information represents a second length shorter than the first length, the driving control unit drives the image sensor in a second condition in which a remaining lifetime of the image sensor is longer than that in a case where the image sensor is driven in the first condition,
the image sensor includes a scanning circuit that performs vertical scanning in which the pixels in the rows are scanned in a unit of the rows,
the first condition comprises a condition in which the vertical scanning is performed a first number of times per unit time, and
the second condition comprises a condition in which the vertical scanning is performed a second number of times smaller than the first number of times per unit time.