Patent ID: 8319872

Claim:
A method of driving a solid image pickup device that has a plurality of pixels, each of the pixels including a photoelectric conversion part and an output means for outputting a signal from the photoelectric conversion part, wherein the output means includes first and second floating diffusion regions, first and second transfer gates for transferring photo-electric charges of the photoelectric conversion part of the pixel to the first and the second floating diffusion regions, respectively, first and second amplifiers, respectively for outputting a signal based on photo-electric charges transferred to the first floating diffusion region to a first vertical output line, and for outputting a signal based on photo-electric charges transferred to the second floating diffusion region to a second vertical output line, which is different than the first vertical output line; the method comprising steps of: dividing photo-electric charges accumulated in the photoelectric conversion part of one of the pixels during one unit of an accumulation period, and reading out the photo-electric charges via the output means of that pixel.