Patent ID: 7400353

Claim:
A solid state image pickup device, comprising a photoelectrical conversion element array and a control unit for controlling reading-out of pixel data from said photoelectrical conversion element array, wherein: said photoelectrical conversion element array comprises a plurality of photoelectrical conversion elements (pixels) arranged in matrix and each of said pixels generates pixel data by performing photoelectrical conversion on incident light entering through an optical system; and said control unit, at the time of reading out said pixel data from said photoelectrical conversion element array, controls execution of: a whole-pixel-reading-out mode for picking up still pictures, which outputs said read-out pixel data of the whole pixels in order by a data unit of a single pixel; a vertically/horizontally-mixed-pixel-reading-out mode for recording moving pictures, which outputs said pixel data after mixing a plurality of pixels in the vertical and horizontal directions of said photo electrical conversion element array; and a one-directionally-mixed-pixel-reading-out mode for auto-focus, which, at the time of controlling said auto-focus, outputs pixel data mixed in only one direction by canceling mixing of pixel data for a plurality of pixels read out from said photoelectrical conversion element array in either the vertical direction or the horizontal direction of said photoelectrical conversion element array.