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AssigneeSony Corporation
InventorsToshiharu Kobayashi, Takumi Okaue, Hirofumi Murase, Hidehiko Okada
Estimating the term…
A digital electronic still camera wherein additional information such as an operation characteristic of the camera can be recorded into and reproduced from a removable record medium. A pickup image signal is picked up by a CCD image sensor and converted into a digital signal by an analog to digital converter. The digital signal is temporarily stored into a digital memory and written onto a removable optical disk apparatus. The digital electronic still camera further comprises an additional information recording and reproducing circuit for recording and reproducing additional information such as an operation characteristic of the camera onto or from the optical disk apparatus.
A digital electronic still camera comprising a solid state image pickup element for picking up an image of a subject to produce a pickup image signal, means for reading out the pickup image signal for one frame in a line sequential relationship from said solid state image pickup element, means for converting the thus read out pickup image signal successively into a digital signal, a digital memory for temporarily storing the digital signal therein, means for writing the digital signal into a removable record medium having a reading and writing circuit, said record medium being removably mounted on said digital electronic still camera, and reading out such digital data from the record medium, and a recording and reproducing circuit for recording additional information such as an operation characteristic of said digital electronic still camera into the removable record medium and reproducing such additional information on the record medium, wherein said digital memory includes a plurality of memories each for storing the digital signal therein, a plurality of compressing circuits each for compressing the digital signal from the corresponding memory and a plurality of buffer memories each for temporarily storing therein the compressed digital data from the corresponding compressing circuit, and means for selectively coupling said plurality of memories to said converting means and the removable record medium.
A digital electronic still camera, comprising a solid state image pickup element for picking up an image of a subject to produce a pickup image signal, means for reading out the pickup image signal for one frame in a line sequential relationship from said solid state image pickup element, means for converting the thus read out pickup image signal successively into a digital signal, a digital memory for temporarily storing the digital signal therein, means for writing the digital signal into or onto a removable record medium having a reading and writing circuit, said record medium being removably mounted on said digital electronic still camera and reading out such digital data from the record medium, and a compressing circuit for compressing data of the digital signal from said digital memory by block coding in synchronism with a reading operation of said reading out means, wherein said digital memory includes first and second memories each having a storage capacity for a predetermined plurality of lines of the digital signal, and means for alternately selecting said first and second memories for each of the predetermined plurality of lines of the pickup image signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.