Patent ID: 7505215

Claim:
A camera module comprising: a camera body including a lens-barrel holding a shooting optical system, a substrate attached to said lens-barrel, an image pickup device incorporated in said lens-barrel and operative to pick up an image of an object focused by said shooting optical system and to output an image pickup signal, and a signal processing unit provided on said substrate and operative to receive said image pickup signal outputted from said image pickup device and to perform a predetermined signal processing; and a shield case covering said lens-barrel and said substrate and operative to provide electromagnetic shielding for said image pickup device and said signal processing unit, the shield case including a front split body and rear split body, the front split body having a generally rectangularly-shaped front surface plate part and four side surface plate parts connected to and depending perpendicularly from the front surface plate part to form a box-shaped configuration with at least one of the four side surface plate parts having a contact plate part connected thereto at an acute angle extending away from the box-shaped configuration, the rear split body having a generally rectangularly-shaped substrate covering plate part and a facially-opposing pair side surface portions connected to and depending perpendicularly from the substrate covering plate part along respective ones of side edges with each one of the pair of side surface portions having a lock part projection extending parallel to the side edges; wherein said lens-barrel includes a plurality of lens-barrel component members stacked together; and a clamping mechanism is provided by which a portion of two said lens-barrel component members adjacent to each other is clamped from both ends in the direction of said stacking, whereby said shield case is positioned relative to said lens-barrel and mounted to said lens-barrel, in the direction of said stacking, wherein the front split body is releasably connected to one of the two lens-barrel component members and the rear split body is releasably connected to a remaining one of the two lens-barrel component members by releasable engagement with the respective ones of the lock part projections while the contact plate part of the front split body and one of the pair of side surface portions of the rear split body contact each other.