Method of driving solid-state imaging device, solid-state imaging device and camera

A camera comprising:

• a solid-state imaging device which has a two-dimensional pixel array provided with a photo-electric conversion unit for photo-electric converting incident light to a signal charge and a vertical register for transferring said signal charge or a vertical register having a photo-electric conversion function for transferring a signal charge and a horizontal register for receiving and transferring said signal charge transferred by said vertical register,
• said camera operating in a first mode in which signal charge of pixels separated from each other in the horizontal direction of a common row are transferred from said vertical register and to said horizontal register and are mixed within said horizontal register, said mixed signal charge is transferred in a horizontal direction and output,
• such that the mixed signal is comprised of signal charges that are originally generated by pixels separated by at least one intervening pixel in the row whose signal charge is not included in the mixed signal, and said camera operating in a second mode in which said register charges are separately transferred in a horizontal direction as a signal charge of each pixel without being mixed within said horizontal register, said first and second modes being switchable,
• and further wherein the horizontal register in the first mode operates such that a mixed signal of charges from non-adjacent pixels of a row above a first row are located between groups of signal charges from said first row.