Patent ID: 6989867

Claim:
A method for controlling a CCD camera having a lens unit comprising the steps of: detecting illumination levels in a certain space to be photographed; generating digital image data corresponding to the detected illumination levels; dividing the digital image data into plural cell regions; comparing the detected illumination levels for each cell region to a previously determined standard illumination level; and switching a photographing mode of a camera to a daytime mode or a nighttime mode by either using an optical low pass filter (OLPF) in the lens unit or not using an optical low pass filter (OLPF) in the lens unit depending on the basis of the comparison result; wherein the step of switching the photographing mode of the camera comprises the sub-steps of: counting the number of cell regions having a detected illumination level less than the standard illumination level; and determining whether the thusly counted number of cell regions is greater than a certain percentage of the total number of cell regions.