Optical apparatus with a voltage controlled variable density element
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsNaoya Kaneda, Hidekage Sato
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An optical apparatus capable of performing an image-taking operation in a plurality of image-taking modes includes a selecting part for selecting one image-taking mode from among a plurality of image-taking modes, a variable density element, and a density control part for controlling density of the variable density element, wherein the density control part is capable of controlling the density of the variable density element in a plurality of density control modes and selects one of the plurality of density control modes according to the image-taking mode selected by the selecting part.
Claims6
An optical apparatus comprising:
- a) a light quantity adjusting device for adjusting the quantity of passing light by moving diaphragm blades;
- b) a variable angle prism;
- and
- a variable density element, said variable density element is provided on one of two glass surfaces of said variable angle prism located closer to said light quantity adjusting device than the other glass surface,
- wherein said variable density element causes to vary density according to the applied voltage and causes to vary the quantity of passing light which passes through itself.
An optical apparatus capable of performing an image-taking operation in a plurality of image-taking modes, said optical apparatus comprising:
- selecting means for selecting one image-taking mode from among a plurality of image-taking modes;
- light quantity adjusting means for adjusting the quantity of passing light by moving diaphragm blades in a plurality of light quantity adjusting modes;
- a variable angle prism;
- a variable density element, said variable density element is provided on one of two glass surfaces of said variable angle prism located closer to said light quantity adjusting means than the other glass surface, said variable density element causes to vary density according to the applied voltage and causes to vary the quantity of passing light which passes through itself;
- density control means for controlling the voltage applied to said variable density element and controlling the density of said variable density element in a plurality of density control modes;
- and
- deciding means for deciding a combination of the density control mode of said density control means and the light quantity adjusting mode of said light quantity adjusting means according to the image-taking mode selected by said selecting means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.