Patent ID: 6678000
Filing Date: 2004-01-13
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
An image pickup apparatus, comprising:(a) a pixel shifting device adapted to shift a light beam incoming upon the imaging surface of an imaging device at intervals of every &frac23; pixel, (b) an image memory which stores pixel data obtained at each of the positions to which said light beam is shifted by said pixel shifting device; (c) a memory controller adapted to cause said image memory to store said pixel data and adapted to read the stored pixel data; (d) a color filter covering the imaging surface of said imaging device and having a regular arrangement formed by repetition of an 8-pixel unit block having two pixels in the line direction and 4 pixels in the column direction, wherein said pixel shifting device is operative to shift said light beam by an amount corresponding to &frac23; pixel pitch both in plus and minus directions, and wherein said image memory is capable of storing at least 9 frames of the pixel data, whereby said memory controller causes said image memory to store said pixel data in a spatial arrangement equivalent to the pixel data obtained by an imaginary imaging device having pixels of a number three times as large as that of said imaging device in each of line and column directions, while operating to enable reading of the stored pixel data in nine times such that the pixel data constituting one frame are read each time, said image pickup apparatus further comprising an image processing device which includes: an adding circuit which performs a computation for mixing pixel data read along upper and lower lines of pixels so as to enable reading of a field pixel data composed of pixel data of the upper and lower lines mixed together; and a camera process circuit for processing the mixed field pixel data outputted from said adding circuit, wherein said color filter has a staggered complementary-color pixel arrangement, and wherein said memory controller serves to cause said image memory to store pixel data read from said imaging device in a frame all-pixel reading mode in which the pixel data of the upper and lower lines are not mixed, said pixel shifting device including correcting means for effecting a pixel shift by one or &frac13; pixel pitch in the line direction so as to correct inversion of magenta and green pixel data at every two pixels as counted in the column direction.