Patent ID: 7772665

Claim:
A solid-state imaging device, comprising: a semiconductor substrate; and a plurality of photoelectric conversion elements arranged on the semiconductor substrate in a row direction and in a column direction orthogonal to the row direction, wherein the photoelectric conversion elements have high-sensitive photoelectric conversion elements as a first group and low-sensitive photoelectric conversion elements as a second group, each of the first group and the second group is configured so that photoelectric conversion element lines arranged in the column direction, each of which includes those of photoelectric conversion elements arranged in the row direction, and that at least three kinds of photoelectric conversion elements respectively detecting different color components are arranged according to an array pattern, each of those of the photoelectric conversion elements included by the first group is disposed at a position displaced in a predetermined direction with respect to a position of each of those of the photoelectric conversion elements included by the second group so that one of the photoelectric conversion elements included by the first group adjoins each of the photoelectric conversion elements included by the second group, the array pattern is determined so that at least said three kinds of photoelectric conversion elements are included by adjacent two of the photoelectric conversion element lines in each of the first group and the second group, one of the photoelectric conversion element lines included by the first group is a first target line, ones of the photoelectric conversion element lines included by the second group are second target lines, the second target lines adjoin the first target line, one of the second target lines is a third target line, a combination of color components detected by the photoelectric conversion elements arranged on the third target line differs from a combination of color components detected by the photoelectric conversion elements arranged on the first target line, a first charge reading electrode is configured to read charge from the photoelectric conversion elements belonging to the first target line, a second charge reading electrode is configured to read charge from the photoelectric conversion elements belonging to the third target line, and the first charge reading electrode and the second charge reading electrode are electrically connected to a common terminal.