Patent ID: 7403226
Filing Date: 2008-07-22
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. An electric camera comprising: an image sensing device with a light receiving surface having N vertically arranged pixels and an arbitrary number of arranged horizontally, N being equal to or more than three times the number of effective scanning lines M of a display screen of 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 output signals of the image sensing device; wherein the image sensing device can vertically mix or cull the numbers of pixels which are at least two of integers equal to or less than an integral part of a quotient of the number of vertically arranged pixel rows N divided by the number of effective scanning lines M, and the driver drives the image sensing device in at least two modes corresponding to the at least two integers; and wherein the driver for the image sensing device changes the number of pixels to be cyclically mixed or culled according to input information from a switch provided inside or outside the camera which requests a view angle change.