Patent ID: 7106377

Claim:
A still image capturing device, comprising: an electronic image sensor including a plurality of pixel elements; a lens for focusing light from a scene onto said image sensor; an electronically actuatable shutter device positioned between said lens and said image sensor, including a plurality of individually addressable and actuatable shutter elements, with a shutter element of said plurality of individually addressable shutter elements substantially corresponding to at least one of said plurality of pixel elements; a memory; a processor communicating with said image sensor, with said shutter device, and with said memory, said processor being configured to control said plurality of shutter elements according to an exposure pattern stored in said memory, whereby different shutter elements of said shutter device may be light transmissive for different lengths of time, and thereby exposing corresponding pixel elements of said image sensor to focused light from said lens for different lengths of time, and said processor being configured to automatically generate said exposure pattern prior to capturing an image by controlling the shutter device to expose at least a first and second subset of the plurality of pixel elements to light for a duration of time and measuring the level of light reaching the first and second subsets of pixel elements, wherein the exposure pattern comprises a first pixel unit exposure duration and a second pixel unit exposure duration, said first pixel unit exposure duration being associated with the first subset of said plurality of pixel elements, said second pixel unit exposure duration being associated with the second subset of said plurality of pixel elements, said first pixel unit exposure duration being longer than said second pixel unit exposure duration, and said second pixel unit exposure duration being greater than zero seconds.