Patent ID: 8345108

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus, comprising: image pickup means having an image pickup surface formed thereon from pixels arranged in a matrix for outputting a result of image pickup of an optical image formed on the image pickup surface; motion detection means for detecting an amount of motion from the result of the image pickup for each of a plurality of blocks into which the image pickup surface is divided in a horizontal direction and/or a vertical direction; control means for controlling exposure time of said image pickup means for each of the blocks based on a result of the detection by said motion detection means; and signal level correction means for correcting and outputting, for each of the blocks, a signal level of the result of the image pickup which varies in accordance with control of the exposure time, wherein said image pickup means outputs the results of the image pickup of the blocks simultaneously and parallelly so as to output the results of the image pickup of the optical image, said motion detection means processes the results of the image pickup of the blocks outputted from said image pickup means individually to detect the motion amount for each of the blocks by cumulatively adding the results of the image pickup for each of the blocks in a unit of a frame to calculate an average value for each of the blocks, calculating an interframe difference value of the average values calculated for each of the blocks, the interframe difference value being a difference between, for a same block of the blocks, the average value calculated in a current frame and the average value calculated in a preceding frame, and detecting the motion amount for each of the blocks based on the corresponding interframe difference value, and said control means controls the exposure time for each of the blocks independently of each other by use of the detected motion amount for each of the blocks such that a respective exposure time is obtained for each block by use of the detected motion amount for the respective block associated therewith and separately from that of all other blocks regardless of the detected motion amount(s) and exposure time(s) of the other blocks.