Patent ID: 8659691

Claim:
A solid-state imaging apparatus comprising: an optical black pixel region comprising pixels arranged in a plurality of rows; an effective pixel region comprising pixels arranged in a plurality of rows, wherein one of said effective pixel region and said optical black region is arranged above the other in the vertical direction; and a read-out control unit which performs in parallel a read out scan of said optical black pixel region and and a reset scan of said effective pixel region, and controls the read out such that a density of rows of the pixels of said effective pixel region from which signals are read out with respect to all the pixels of said effective pixel region is lower than a density of rows of the pixels of said optical black pixel region from which signals are read out with respect to all the pixels of said optical black pixel region, and a scan period of a pixel of said effective pixel region from which a signal is not read out is shorter than a scan period of a pixel of said effective pixel region from which a signal is read out.