Image pickup device having white balance control function
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorMasao Suzuki
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
There is provided an apparatus having a discriminating circuit to discriminate a magnitude of an occupied area of a single object in a picture plane with respect to a video signal formed by an image pickup element from an object light when a white balance of the video signal is adjusted, wherein by controlling the white balance adjusting operation in accordance with an output of the discriminating circuit, the white balance can be preferably controlled even when the occupied area of the single object is large. Upon macro photographing as well, by making the white balance adjusting operation different from the operation in the ordinary photographing mode, the white balance can be preferably controlled.
Claims22
An image pickup device comprising:
- (a) image pickup means for forming a video signal from an object light;
- (b) adjusting means for adjusting a white balance of the video signal which is generated from the image pickup means;
- (c) discriminating means for discriminating a size of an area which is occupied by a single object in a picture with respect to the video signal, said discriminating means detecting a correlation of color signals on a plurality of sampling points which are distributed and arranged on the picture plane;
- and
- (d) control means for controlling the operation of the adjusting means in accordance with an output of the discriminating means.
An image pickup device comprising:
- (a) image pickup means for forming a video signal from an object light;
- (b) adjusting means for adjusting a white balance of the video signal which is generated from the image pickup means, said adjusting means including signal processing means for forming color temperature information in accordance with levels of said plurality of color signals in the video signal which is generated from the image pickup means;
- (c) detecting means for detecting whether a macro photographing is performed by the image pickup means or not;
- and
- (d) control means for controlling the operation of the adjusting means in accordance with a detection result of said detection means, said control means controlling a field angle for picking up an image of said image pickup means in accordance with whether the macro photographing is performed by the image pickup means or not.
An image pickup device comprising:
- (a) image pickup means for forming a video signal from an object light;
- (b) adjusting means for adjusting a white balance of the video signal which is generated from the image pickup means;
- (c) discriminating means for discriminating a size of an area which is occupied by similar color or similar brightness in a picture with respect to the video signal, said discriminating means including an extracting circuit for extracting a plurality of video information in a plurality of different areas in the picture and a detection circuit for detecting a correlation among the plurality of video information;
- and
- (d) preventing means for preventing said adjusting means from using a video signal in the area occupied by the similar color or similar brightness in accordance with an output of the discriminating means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.