Patent ID: 8218029

Claim:
An image taking apparatus comprising: an image taking device; a gain adjustment circuit; and a correction circuit; wherein said image taking device operates with timings based on a frame rate determined in advance and the total number of horizontal lines, has an electronic shutter allowing a shutter speed to be adjusted, receives light in a period equal to said shutter speed of said electronic shutter and carries out an opto-electrical conversion process on said light for every horizontal line in order to generate a predetermined signal; said gain adjustment circuit adjusts the gain of said electrical signal received from said image taking device in order to generate a video signal which is a signal having a level determined in advance; said correction circuit compares an image taking video signal generated by said gain adjustment circuit with a reference video signal also generated by said gain adjustment circuit in order to compute a flicker component contained in said image taking video signal as a component oriented in the vertical direction of an image represented by said image taking video signal in a flicker correction process of eliminating flickers contained in said image represented by said image taking video signal in accordance with said computed flicker component; and said image taking video signal is a video signal which is generated by said gain adjustment circuit when the blinking period of said received light is equal to the integral multiple of a frame rate and a shutter speed determined in advance has been set for said electronic shutter whereas said reference video signal is a flicker-free video signal which is generated without a flicker by said gain adjustment circuit when said blinking period of said received light is equal to the integral multiple of a frame rate and a reference shutter speed expressed in terms of an exposure time equal to a multiple of said blinking period of said received light has been set for said electronic shutter.