Patent ID: 6741284
Filing Date: 2004-05-25
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
An SLR digital still camera comprising:a half mirror which allows object-carrying light, transmitted through a photographing lens, to be partly incident on a finder optical system and partly incident on an image pick-up device; a mirror driving device for driving the half mirror between a viewing position and a photographing position; wherein said half mirror is located in a photographing light path to allow object-carrying light, transmitted through the photographing lens, to be incident on a finder optical system when in said viewing position; and said half mirror is retracted from the photographing light path to allow said object-carrying light to be incident on the image pick-up device when in said photographing position; a controller for calculating a displacement from a provisional focus position, based on an electrical signal obtained by a photo-electric conversion of the object-carrying light made incident on the image pick-up device through the half mirror when said half mirror is in the viewing position, to obtain a focusing position in which the photographing lens is focused on an object to be photographed when the half mirror is retracted from the photographing light path; a memory for storing said focus position; and a drive mechanism that moves one of the photographing lens and the image pick-up device in accordance with the focus position stored in the memory when the half mirror is moved to the photographing position upon a photographing operation, so that an in-focus image of the photographing lens is formed on the image pick-up device.