Patent ID: 8325261

Claim:
A solid-state imaging device comprising: a pixel unit in which a plurality of photoelectric conversion elements are arranged; a comparison unit comparing a reference signal with a signal acquired by the photoelectric conversion element of the pixel unit; a reference signal generating unit generating the reference signal; a counting unit counting an amount of time when the relative magnitude of the pixel signal and the reference signal is inverted by the comparison unit; and an offset setting unit setting an offset in the reference signal generated by the reference signal generating unit, wherein the reference signal generating unit generates as the reference signal a basis signal at the time of non-signaling from the pixel unit, a first slope signal for allowing the counting unit to count the amount of time corresponding to the non-signaling, and a second slope signal for allowing the counting unit to count the amount of time corresponding to the pixel signal acquired by the pixel unit, and wherein the offset setting unit sets the offset in the basis signal, the first slope signal, and the second slope signal generated by the reference signal generating unit.