Patent ID: 8477212

Claim:
A camera device comprising: an imager which outputs a long exposure signal and a short exposure signal, the long exposure signal being a video signal which has a long exposure time and the short exposure signal being a video signal which has a short exposure time within one field period; a knee processor which compresses, at a compression rate, the long exposure signal having a luminance level equal to or higher than a knee point, which is a reference luminance level of the long exposure signal at which knee processing is performed, to decrease an inclination of an incident light amount-luminance level line, which represents a variation in the luminance level of the long exposure signal with an amount of incident light input to the imager; and a knee controller which adjusts the knee point and the compression rate according to a luminance level of a synthesized signal obtained by synthesizing the long exposure signal and the short exposure signal, to make the knee point lower with an increase in the luminance level of the synthesized signal and to adjust the inclination to approach an original inclination before the knee processor compresses the long exposure signal.