Patent Document ID: 9712742
Application ID: 14560736
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A photographing apparatus comprising: a photographing device for obtaining image data of a subject; a release device for performing a photographing operation; a memory for storing facial position data; a storage for storing the image data; a photographing control device for obtaining a moving image of the subject by continuously obtaining image data with the photographing device until the release device is actuated; a face judgment device for performing processing for judging whether a human face is included in each frame of the moving image; a face detection device for detecting a facial position in each frame of the moving image that has been judged to include a face by the face judgment device; and a control device for controlling the photographing device, the face judgment device, the face detection device, the memory, and the storage so that the facial position detected by the face detection device is stored in the memory, wherein the determining of whether a human face is included in the first frame of the successive frames comprise: processing each pixel of the first frame, determining whether a human face is included in a first frame of the successive frames; if a human face is not determined to be in the first frame, repeating the determining on a next frame of the successive frames; and if a human face is determined to be in the first frame, determining whether a human face is included in a next frame of the successive frames, wherein the determining of whether a human face is included in the next frame of the successive frames comprises: determining a variation between the first frame and the next frame; if the variation exceeds a threshold, determining whether a human face is included in the next frame of the successive frames by processing each pixel of the next frame; and if the variation does not exceed the threshold, determining whether a human face is included in the next frame by processing only pixels in the next frame located in a region corresponding to the region of the first frame in which the human face was detected.