Patent ID: 7102686

Claim:
An image-capturing apparatus, comprising: a first image-capturing unit having a first image-capturing optical system; and a second image-capturing unit having a second image-capturing optical system, the second image-capturing unit being detachably connected to the first image-capturing unit in a multi-lens camera mode; wherein the first image-capturing unit is an electronic camera, said first image-capturing unit comprising: joint holes for connecting with joints of the second image-capturing unit, and an interface for transmitting data between the first image-capturing unit and the second image-capturing unit, wherein the interface can also accommodate writing and reading data to and from an external storage device detachably connected to the electronic camera when the image capturing apparatus is not in a multi-lens camera mode, wherein each of the first and second image-capturing optical systems comprises a zoom lens; and the image-capturing apparatus further comprises a lens controller for driving the zoom lenses of the first and second image-capturing optical systems to equalize zooming magnifications of the first and second image-capturing optical systems, wherein said first and second image-capturing units cooperatively provide at least one of a panoramic imaging mode and a three-dimensional imaging mode when operatively connected in the multi-lens camera mode, and wherein full image data from both the first and second image-capturing units are captured simultaneously and the simultaneously captured image data are stored while in the multi-lens camera mode.