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US 5,517,243 AGranted
Image sensing apparatus with control of charge storage time
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsToshihiko Kudo, Takao Kinoshita, Yuji Sakaegi, Makoto Kondo
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image sensing apparatus is provided with a solid-state image sensor which is capable of sweeping out electric charges therefrom, a mechanical shutter and a control circuit for controlling the time period from the time point at which the electric charges of the solid-state image sensor are swept out when the mechanical shutter is in its open state to the time point at which the mechanical shutter is closed.
Claims20
An image sensing apparatus comprising:
- A) a solid-state image sensor capable of sweeping out electric charges therefrom;
- B) an optical shutter;
- C) a release switch for instructing a photographing operation;
- D) mode selecting means for selecting one of a plurality of photographing modes including a first mode and a second mode whose photographing characteristic is different from a photographing characteristic of said first mode;
- and
- E) a control circuit for controlling said optical shutter to cause said shutter to open in response to an operation of said release switch, and for controlling, in a first mode, a charge storage time of said solid-state image sensor according to a time period from a time point at which the electric charges of said solid-state image sensor are swept out when said optical shutter is in its open state to a time point at which said optical shutter is closed and for controlling, in said second mode, a charge storage time of said solid-state image sensor according to a time period from the time point at which the electric charges of said solid-state image sensor are swept out to a time point at which a read-out operation of said solid-state image sensor is executed.
3 more elements
An image sensing apparatus comprising:
- A) image sensing means capable of clearing image information therefrom and permitting image information to be read out therefrom for the purpose of controlling charge storage time, said image sensing means being provided with a first read-out mode in which information is read out from effective pixels by a single read-out operation and a second read-out mode in which the information is read out from the effective pixels separately by a plurality of read-out operations;
- B) an optical shutter;
- C) selecting means for selecting the first or second read-out mode;
- and
- D) control means, in response to said selecting means, for setting the charge storage time of said image sensing means by controlling an image-information clearing operation of the image sensing means and said read-out operation of said image sensing means in the first read-out mode, and said control means for setting the charge storage time of said image sensing means by controlling an image-information clearing operation of the image sensing means and a light-blocking operation of said optical shutter in the second read-out mode.
2 more elements
An image sensing apparatus comprising:
- A) image sensing means whose charge storage time is controllable;
- B) optical light-blocking means;
- C) illumination means;
- and
- D) control means, responsive to a state of said illumination means, for performing control of substantial charge storage time without using said optical light-blocking means in the execution of photography utilizing said illumination means, and for performing control of substantial charge storage time with using said optical light-blocking means in the execution of photography without utilizing said illumination means.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.