Patent ID: 8681246

Claim:
A method in a portable electronic device having a camera application, a viewfinder having at least two viewfinder resolutions, a multidirectional input device, and a sensor array, the method comprising: when a zoom level of the camera application is 1×, generating a first image by scaling a predetermined number of rows and columns of pixels of the sensor array to a selected viewfinder resolution at a given frame rate; when the zoom level is greater than 1×, and when the selected viewfinder resolution is smaller than a largest viewfinder resolution, cropping a region of interest of the predetermined number of rows and columns of pixels in accordance with the zoom level and generating a second image by scaling the cropped region of interest to the selected viewfinder resolution at a frame rate higher than the given frame rate; receiving, from the multidirectional input device, input comprising an indication of the zoom level and a viewfinder resolution; and, generating images according to one of either an enlarged or reduced field of view on the viewfinder depending on a direction of the input.