Patent ID: 7148922

Claim:
An electronic camera for electrically photographing a subject, comprising: an illuminating unit configured to illuminate the subject with preliminary light rays, and to illuminate the subject with main light rays for actual exposure after illumination by the preliminary light rays; an exposure control section configured to control an exposure of an image of the subject illuminated with the preliminary light rays to generate preliminary light image data, and to control an exposure of an image of the subject illuminated with the main light rays to generate main image data; an extracting section configured to extract first block areas from the preliminary image data such that the first block areas correspond to a part of the subject which is mainly illuminated with the preliminary light rays in the preliminary image data; and a setting section configured to set a first white balance adjustment which is applied to second block areas in the main image data that correspond to the first block areas in the preliminary image data; wherein the first white balance is set before the exposure of the image of the subject illuminated with the main light rays, and a white balance of the second block areas in the main image data is adjusted in accordance with the first white balance adjustment.