Patent ID: 7978256

Claim:
An imaging device comprising: a photographing lens having a manual focus mechanism; an imaging unit for receiving subject light flux made incident by the photographing lens on an image forming surface, and subjecting the subject image formed on the imaging surface to photoelectric conversion to output image data; a display unit for carrying out a live view display operation using image data acquired by the imaging unit; a contrast auto focus (AF) unit for obtaining contrast information of the subject image from the image data acquired by the imaging unit, and guiding the photographing lens into a first specified focus permissible range based on the contrast information; a phase difference AF unit for causing a mirror member to be placed in an optical path of the photographing lens, receiving the subject light flux reflected by the mirror member and detecting a defocus amount of the photographing lens by a phase difference method, and guiding the photographing lens into a second specified focus permissible range according to the detection results; a release button having a two stage operating feature, of a half pressed operation and a fully pressed operation; and a control unit for controlling focusing of the imaging device so that, when the release button has been pressed down halfway during execution of the live view display operation, a focus adjustment operation using the contrast AF unit is executed, and after that when the release button has been pressed down fully, the focus adjustment operation using the phase difference AF unit is executed, and when the focus adjustment operation using the contrast AF unit is executed during execution of the live view display operation, if, after that, a manual focus operation follows, the focus adjustment operation using the contrast AF unit is not executed again, if, after that, the release button is pressed down fully, there is a transition to a shooting operation without executing the focus adjustment operation using the phase difference AF unit.