Patent ID: 8466986

Claim:
An image capturing apparatus comprising: an image capturing unit; a data obtaining unit configured to obtain temporally-continued frames of image data while driving the image capturing unit at one of predetermined continuous capturing speeds; a holding unit configured to temporarily hold the frames of image data obtained by the data obtaining unit; a compression unit configured to compress the frames of image data temporarily held in the holding unit; a determination unit configured to determine whether or not a frame of image data compressed by the compression unit falls within a predetermined data volume; a retry number setting unit configured to set a retry number for each of the frames of image data according to a continuous capturing speed of the image capturing unit driven by the data obtaining unit; and a control unit configured to perform control to (a) read a frame of image data from the holding unit, (b) determine if retrying compression is permitted by using the retry number, (c) compress the frame of image data by the compression unit at a compression ratio that corresponds to a number of times that compression has been tried on the frame of image data if it is determined that retrying compression is permitted, (d) determine by the determination unit whether the compressed frame of image data falls within the predetermined data volume, (e) return to process (b) if the determination unit determines that the compressed frame of image data does not fall within the predetermined data volume, and (f) compress the frame of image data at a maximum compression ratio if it is determined at process (b) that retrying compression is not permitted.