Patent ID: 7697043
Filing Date: 2010-04-13
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A solid-state image pickup apparatus comprising: a solid-state image sensor comprising first photosensitive cells for photoelectrically converting incident light from a subject field and second photosensitive cells for photoelectrically converting the incident light with lower sensitivity than the first photosensitive cells, each of the first photosensitive cells forming a particular pixel together with a corresponding one of the second photosensitive cells; and a signal processor for processing a first image signal and a second image signal outputted from the first photo sensitive cell and the second photosensitive cell, respectively; said signal processor comprising an actual pickup circuit for processing an actual pickup signal representative of the subject field actually picked up, and a photometry circuit for processing a photometry signal representative of a quantity of the incident light to perform photometry before actual pickup; said actual pickup circuit comprising a shading corrector for executing shading correction on the actual pickup signal; said photometry circuit dividing an image represented by the photometry signal into a preselected number of blocks, measuring a quantity of the incident light block by block to thereby produce a result of photometry block by block, and generating first color shading correction information in accordance with a result of photometry; said shading corrector comprising a color shading corrector for generating shading correction gains in accordance with the first color shading correction information and executing, based on the shading correction gains, color shading correction on the actual pickup signal.