Patent ID: 7944498
Filing Date: 2011-05-17
Classification: G02B,G03B

Abstract:
1. A multi-focal camera apparatus comprising: a lens module which comprises a plurality of lenses that concentrate light incident thereupon; an image-sensor module which comprises a plurality of sensing zones respectively corresponding to the lenses, and which obtains a plurality of images by converting beams of incident light transmitted through the lenses into electrical signals using the sensing zones, wherein the lenses have the same optical properties and are different distances apart from the respective sensing zones; and an autofocus-image-generation module which generates an autofocus image by extracting an image portion with optimum sharpness from a predetermined image that is chosen among the images, blurring the images excluding the predetermined image, and merging a blurry image obtained by the blurring and the extracted image portion, wherein the autofocus-image-generation module obtains the blurry image by blurring all the images except the predetermined image, averaging the blurred images, and merging the results of the averaging, and wherein a low pass filter applies a smaller weight to an image captured using a lens whose object side focus distance is closer than that of the lens used to produce the predetermined image.