Patent ID: 7468746

Claim:
A digital camera comprising: a diaphragm, which controls an amount of incident light by varying a stop-amount; a solid-state imaging element, which receives the incident light passed through the diaphragm, said solid-state imaging element having a plurality of pixels, each of the pixels being divided into a main pixel, which has a first area for obtaining a high-sensitivity image signal, and a sub-pixel, which has a second area which is smaller than the first area, for obtaining a low-sensitivity image signal; a controller, which individually controls a gain amount of the high-sensitivity image signal and a gain amount of the low-sensitivity image signal in response to the stop-amount of the diaphragm; and a synthesizing processor, which synthesizes the controlled high-sensitivity image signal and the controlled low-sensitivity image signal, wherein the controller increases the gain amount of the high-sensitivity image signal and decreases the gain amount of the low-sensitivity image signal when the diaphragm is set to an open side, whereas the controller decreases the gain amount of the high-sensitivity image signal and increases the gain amount of the low-sensitivity image signal when the diaphragm is set to a small-stop side.