Patent ID: 11917290
Assignee: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 9:
10. An image pickup apparatus comprising:
a photoelectric conversion device having a pixel including a photoelectric conversion element that outputs a signal according to an incident photon, a photon counter that measures the number of photons incident to the pixel, a time counter that measures a time until the photo counter reaches a first threshold after the photo counter starts measurement and outputs the measured time as a pixel value,
at least one processor or circuit configured to function as:
a first threshold changing unit configured to change the first threshold according to a predetermined control signal based on object information;
an object detection unit configured to detect an object region based on an image signal that has been read out from a pixel region, wherein the pixel region includes two-dimensionally arranged pixels;
wherein the first threshold changing unit sets the first threshold for the object region detected by the object detection unit as higher than the first threshold for the regions other than the object region;
an image processing unit configured to process an image that has been read out from the photoelectric conversion device; and
a communication unit configured to externally transmit an image that has been processed by the image processing unit.