Patent ID: 7132634

Claim:
A distance measuring apparatus, comprising: an AF sensor which forms images of light from a distance measurement object on a pair of line sensors comprising a plurality of light receiving elements and integrates signals obtained from the light receiving elements for each of the plurality of light receiving elements to generate a pair of sensor data; and a computation processing circuit which acquires the pair of sensor data generated by the AF sensor from the AF sensor, generates a pair of AF data for distance measurement calculation showing contrast of sensor images formed by the pair of line sensors by difference calculation processing according to the pair of sensor data, and calculates a distance from the distance measurement object according to the AF data, where the pair of the AF data is generated before the computation processing circuit acquires another pair of sensor data generated by the AF sensor from the AF sensor for generating another pair of AF data for the distance measurement calculation, wherein the computation processing circuit generates the AF data and stores the generated AF data in a memory before starting the distance measurement calculation, and uses the AF data stored in the memory when the distance measurement calculation is carried out, wherein the computation processing circuit sequentially acquires the sensor data of each of the plurality of light receiving elements from the AF sensor, and at the same time sequentially generates the AF data generated from the acquired sensor data of each of the plurality of light receiving elements.