Patent ID: 7492412

Claim:
A solid-state image pickup apparatus comprising: a solid-state image sensor comprising an array of photo-sensitive cells bi-dimensionally arranged for converting incident light to a corresponding signal charge, each of the photo-sensitive cells including a main region and a sub-region lower in sensitivity than the main region; and a signal processor for receiving the signal charges from the photo-sensitive cells and processing pixel data represented by the signal charges to output the pixel data processed as recording data; said signal processor comprising a RAW data reducing circuit for compressing, in a RAW mode for recording raw pixel data, at least one of high-sensitivity pixel data and low-sensitivity pixel data output from the main region and the sub-region, respectively; said RAW data reducing circuit comprising: an arithmetic circuit for multiplying the low-sensitivity pixel data by a predetermined sensitivity correction coefficient that makes sensitivity of the low-sensitivity pixel data comparable with sensitivity of the high-sensitivity pixel data to output a produce resultant from multiplication; and a data decision circuit for comparing the product with the high-sensitivity pixel data, and using either one of the high-sensitivity pixel data and the low-sensitivity pixel data as basic data to omit and embed pixel data in accordance with an embedding condition for embedding processed data in the basic data to generate the recording data.