Patent ID: 7403222

Claim:
A method for generating an exposure setting, comprising: a) selecting one of a plurality of predetermined exposure settings as a current exposure setting for a solid state camera having a camera imager; b) generating a captured scene by the camera imager using the current exposure setting; c) selecting according to an automated search methodology another one of the exposure settings to be the current setting in response to determining the captured scene as being underexposed or overexposed; and d) repeating b) and c) until the captured scene is neither underexposed or overexposed, wherein the search methodology performs a coarse granularity search so long as the captured scene is either grossly overexposed or grossly underexposed, and then changes to a fine granularity search if the captured scene is still overexposed or underexposed but not grossly so, wherein the search methodology performs the coarse granularity search, when selecting another one of the exposure settings, so long as one of the following is true: (1) there are few pixels in the captured scene, using the current exposure setting, that are above a noise threshold, and (2) there are many pixels in the captured scene that are above a maximum threshold; and if not then the search methodology performs the fine granularity search.