Patent ID: 8520128

Claim:
A photographing apparatus, comprising: one or more lenses through which light is received into the photographing apparatus; an auto focus (AF) sensor configured to generate AF data; and an AF control unit configured to receive the AF data from the AF sensor and to control focusing of the one or more lenses using the received AF data, wherein the AF sensor includes a plurality of AF pixels and a control element, each of the plurality of AF pixels comprising: a light-receiving element configured to receive a portion of the light received into the photographing apparatus and to produce an output in response to the received portion of the light; and a circuit element configured to generate the AF data using the output of the light-receiving element, and wherein the control element of the AF sensor is configured to receive, from each of a first set AF pixels among the plurality of AF pixels, an information about an amount of light received by the light-receiving element of the respective one of the first set AF pixels, the control element of the AF sensor being configured to control an operation of the plurality of AF pixels based on the information about the amount of received light received from the first set AF pixels.