Patent ID: 7705901

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus, comprising: a plurality of photosensitive devices each forming a pixel and producing a signal charge responsive to an incident light, said plurality of photosensitive devices being bi-dimensionally arranged in rows and columns to form a photosensitive cell array, each of said plurality of photosensitive devices comprising a first photosensitive region and a second photosensitive region having substantially a same photosensitive area as the first photosensitive region; a plurality of first transfer paths arranged in a direction of the columns for transferring the signal charges stored in said plurality of photosensitive devices; and a plurality of microlenses each being allocated to a particular pixel for condensing incident light on a corresponding one of said plurality of photosensitive devices which is located at a position of the particular pixel, wherein when light beams incident on said apparatus are substantially parallel with each other, signal charges read out from said first and second photosensitive regions of each pixel are processed independently of each other, said first and second photosensitive regions being opposite to each other in a direction of the rows, each of said plurality of first transfer paths being arranged between adjacent ones of the columns of pixels, each of said plurality of first transfer paths being connected to the first photosensitive region of one of said plurality of photosensitive devices which is on a first transfer path of said first transfer paths, and being connected to the second photosensitive region of another of said plurality of photosensitive devices which is on the first transfer path, and wherein said first transfer path transfers the signal charges stored in said first photosensitive region of the one photosensitive device together with the signal charges stored in said second photosensitive region of the another photosensitive device.