Patent ID: 8508608

Claim:
An image capture device including a sensor having an active area comprising a set of pixels, each pixel providing data that represents the exposure of that pixel, and a data storage device for storing data from the pixels, wherein said set of pixels comprises a plurality of pixel subsets and said image capture device captures a plurality of time-separated lo-res images by exposing substantially simultaneously the pixels within each pixel subset and exposing sequentially the different pixel subsets by starting the exposure of each pixel subset at a different exposure start time and ending the exposure of each pixel subset at a different exposure end time, wherein each said lo-res image has a resolution of less than the full pixel set and comprises the data from a different pixel subset, and at least one of the pixel subsets includes pixels from substantially the entire active area of the sensor, wherein after all of the pixels have been exposed the image capture device digitizes a charge on all the pixels to provide a set of digital data and transfers said digital data to the data storage device, and wherein said image capture device captures a hi-res image by using data from all the pixels, the hi-res image having a resolution substantially equal to the full pixel set.