Patent ID: 8553139
Filing Date: 2013-10-08
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. An image pickup apparatus comprising: a photographing lens that forms a subject image; an image pickup device having an image pickup plane on which pixels for accumulating an amount of charge corresponding to a light quantity of light received via the photographing lens are two-dimensionally arranged; a mechanical rear curtain shutter that runs along the image pickup plane to move from a state in which light from the photographing lens reaches the image pickup plane to a shaded state; a reset section that divides the image pickup plane into a plurality of pixel groups, each including a plurality of lines of pixels, along the running direction ahead of running of the mechanical rear curtain shutter and collectively resets charge of all pixels included in one pixel group sequentially at timing per pixel group according to running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter; an image processing section that corrects a signal level of an image signal read from the image pickup device so as to approximate to an image signal obtained when the pixels have a same exposure time based on the running characteristics of the mechanical rear curtain shutter and reset timing for each pixel group by the reset section, to thereby correct an exposure variation caused by collectively resetting the pixel group including the plurality of lines of pixels; and a correction coefficient calculation section that calculates a correction coefficient for each of a plurality of pixel lines (i) using a set exposure time (T sh ), a time after a photographing start instruction is generated until the mechanical rear curtain shutter runs through the pixel line (T mec i ), and a time after the photographing start instruction is generated on the pixel line until electronic reset is performed (T esht i ), wherein the image processing section corrects a signal level based on the correction coefficients and wherein the correction coefficient calculation section calculates a correction coefficient (G i ) for each of a plurality of pixel lines using the expression: