Patent ID: 8169511

Claim:
An imaging apparatus comprising: a solid-state imaging device including a plurality of effective pixel areas that receive subject light to generate charges, and a plurality of OB pixel areas that is light-shielded and outputs black level determination signals; a data component extraction unit that extracts data components excluding noise components from (i) effective signals output from the effective pixel areas and (ii) OB signals output from the OB pixel areas, wherein imaging signals output from solid-state imaging device include the effective signals and the OB signals; and a black level determination unit that determines a black level of the data components of the effective signals by calculating an average of n data components of the OB signals extracted by the data component extraction unit, where n is a natural number of 2 or greater, wherein the data component extraction unit performs a multiple extraction process of extracting a data component from one imaging signal m times, for each of at least a part of the OB signals, which are output from the solid-state imaging device, where m is a natural number of 2 or greater.