Patent ID: 8154619

Claim:
An imaging apparatus comprising: an imaging device outputting, during a unit period of time, a long-exposure-time image signal having a long-exposure-time period being a relatively long exposure time and a short-exposure-time image signal having a short-exposure-time period being a relatively short exposure time; first clipping processing means for clipping a part not lower than a first signal level of a luminance signal obtained from the long-exposure-time image signal; second clipping processing means for clipping a part not higher than a second signal level of a luminance signal obtained from the short-exposure-time image signal and for clipping a part not lower than a third signal level of the luminance signal obtained from the short-exposure-time image signal; and signal processing means for generating a synthesized image signal having a dynamic range wider than both of dynamic ranges of the long-exposure-time image signal and the short-exposure-time image signal by synthesizing the long-exposure-time image signal having been subjected to the clipping processing by the first clipping processing means and the short-exposure-time image signal having been subjected to the clipping processing by the second clipping processing means, wherein the second signal level is not lower than a signal level obtained by dividing the first signal level by a ratio in time of the long exposure time to the short exposure time.