Patent ID: 9215389
Filing Date: 2015-12-15
Classification: H01L,H04N

Abstract:
1. A digital photographing apparatus comprising: an optical system for focusing light incident from a subject; an image pickup device that photoelectrically converts the light incident through the optical system; a phase-difference auto-focusing (AF) unit for determining whether a current state is an in-focus state from a phase-difference detection signal generated by the image pickup device; and an interpolation unit for performing interpolation; wherein the image pickup device comprises an array of pixels having consecutive rows and consecutive columns over an entire region of the image pickup device, each pixel of the array of pixels consisting of a same 2×2 pattern of sub-pixels that comprises: the interpolation unit performs interpolation on the plurality of light-receiving sub-pixels and the phase-difference detection sub-pixel; each sub-pixel of the plurality of light-receiving sub-pixels of a pixel has a different color from other sub-pixels of the plurality of light-receiving sub-pixels, and the interpolation unit performs interpolation on the light receiving sub-pixels of the same color using neighboring pixels of the same pattern over the entire region of the image pickup device, and performs interpolation on the phase-difference detection sub-pixels using neighboring pixels of the same pattern over the entire region of the image pickup device; the array of pixels comprises a first group of pixels and a second group of pixels, wherein each pixel of the array of pixels is classified in either the first group or the second group according to an arrangement of the confined light-receiving region of the phase-difference detection sub-pixel thereof; and the confined light-receiving region of the phase-difference detection sub-pixel of each pixel of the first group of pixels and the confined light-receiving region of the phase-difference detection sub-pixel of each pixel of the second group of pixels are arranged biased to opposite directions; the interpolation unit performs a uniform interpolation for each light-receiving sub-pixel and phase-difference detection sub-pixel of each pixel of the image pickup device; the interpolation unit, for a sub-pixel having a location in a sub-pixel column x and a sub-pixel row y defined by [x, y], performs interpolation using: the sub-pixels for the first interpolation pattern have locations defined by [x±1, y±2] and [x±1, y], sub-pixels for the second interpolation pattern have locations defined by [x±2, y±1] and [x, y±1], and sub-pixels for the third interpolation pattern have locations defined by [x±1, y±1].