Patent ID: 8059177

Claim:
An electric camera comprising: an image sensing device with a light receiving surface having N vertically arranged pixels and an arbitrary number of pixels arranged horizontally, N being equal to or more than three times the number of effective scanning lines M of a display screen of a television system; a driver including a first driver mode to drive the image sensing device to vertically mix or cull signal charges accumulated in individual pixels of every K pixels to produce a number of lines of output signals which corresponds to the number of effective scanning lines M, K being at least one of integers equal to or less than an integral part of a quotient of N divided by M; said driver also including a second driver mode to drive the image sensing device to vertically mix or cull signal charges accumulated in individual pixels of every K pixels to produce, during a vertical effective scanning period of the television system, a number of lines of output signals which corresponds to 1/K the number of vertically arranged pixels N of the image sensing device, K being an integer equal to or less than an integral part of a quotient of N divided by M; and a signal processing unit to generate image signals by using the output signals of the image sensing device; wherein the driving by the first driver mode and the driving by the second driver mode are selectively switched according to input information from a switch provided inside or outside the electric camera.