Patent ID: 7733403

Claim:
A method of driving a CCD type solid-state imaging device comprising a plurality of photoelectric conversion elements arranged on a semiconductor substrate in a row direction and a column direction perpendicular to the row direction, and a charge transfer device that reads out electric charges generated in the plurality of photoelectric conversion elements, and that transfers the read electric charges in the column direction, which is a charge transfer direction, wherein the charge transfer device comprises a charge transfer channel formed in the semiconductor substrate, and a plurality of electrodes formed above the charge transfer channel, the method comprising: reading out the electric charges from at least a part of the plurality of photoelectric conversion elements to the charge transfer channel; multiplying the electric charges by moving the electric charges in a charge accumulation packet corresponding to middle one of three electrodes, which are arranged in the column direction and which respectively correspond to charge accumulation packets, to a multiplication packet formed below the middle one of the corresponding three electrodes by a multiplication pulse, wherein: the multiplication packet corresponds to at least the three electrodes, and the multiplication packet is formed by supplying driving pulses having a predetermined level to both end ones of the three electrodes and supplying, to the middle ones of the three electrodes, the multiplication pulse that causes avalanche multiplication with respect to the predetermined level, wherein the multiplying is repeated plural times when the charge accumulation packets are located at predetermined positions; switching between (i) multiplication transfer driving in which the multiplying is performed and (ii) normal transfer driving in which the multiplying is not performed, according to a photographing condition; and when the multiplication transfer driving is performed, making control so that a saturated charge amount of each of the plurality of photoelectric conversion elements at a time of imaging is smaller than a saturated charge amount of each of the plurality of photoelectric conversion elements at a time of imaging in a case of performing the normal transfer driving, wherein in the case of performing the multiplication transfer driving, the number of times the multiplying is performed is set so that a multiplication factor of the electric charges does not exceed Q 2 /Q 1 where Q 1 denotes the saturated charge amount of each of the plurality of photoelectric conversion elements at the time of imaging in the case of performing the multiplication transfer driving, and Q 2 denotes the saturated charge amount of each of the plurality of photoelectric conversion elements at the time of imaging in the case of performing the normal transfer driving.