Patent ID: 7680410

Claim:
An imaging device having an image sensor for taking a subject image, comprising: a flash unit for emitting a flash, said flash unit emitting the flash before regular shooting to perform pre-emission when the regular shooting is instructed, and said flash unit emitting the flash in synchronization with the regular shooting to perform regular emission; a signal extractor for extracting an image signal of the subject image taken by said image sensor during a period of non-emission elapsing just before the pre-emission and the regular shooting without pre-emission; a light-amount corrector for calculating a difference between subject brightness of said non-emission and subject brightness of said pre-emission on the basis of said image signal with respect to each of divided small areas of a shooting frame of said image sensor, said light-amount corrector selecting the small area, which has the maximum brightness difference, to derive a correction amount of a flash amount of said regular emission on the basis of the subject brightness of the non-emission of the selected small area; and a light-amount controller for controlling said flash unit so as to perform said regular emission with the flash amount corrected in accordance with said correction amount derived by said light-amount corrector.