Determining a final exposure setting automatically for a sold state camera without a separate light metering circuit
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsCynthia S. Bell, Edward P. Tomaszewski, Amy E. Hansen, Kannan Raj
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An embodiment of the invention is a method of generating a final exposure setting, including, (a) selecting one of a number of predetermined exposure settings as a current exposure setting for a solid state camera having a camera imager, (b) generating a captured scene by the camera imager using the current exposure setting, (c) selecting according to an automated search methodology another one of the exposure settings to be the current setting in response to the captured scene being underexposed or overexposed, and, (d) repeating (b) and (c) until the captured scene is neither underexposed or overexposed.
Claims12
A method for generating an exposure setting, comprising:
- a) selecting one of a plurality of predetermined exposure settings as a current exposure setting for a solid state camera having a camera imager;
- b) generating a captured scene by the camera imager using the current exposure setting;
- c) selecting according to an automated search methodology another one of the exposure settings to be the current setting in response to determining the captured scene as being underexposed or overexposed;
- and
- d) repeating b) and c) until the captured scene is neither underexposed or overexposed, wherein the search methodology performs a coarse granularity search so long as the captured scene is either grossly overexposed or grossly underexposed, and then changes to a fine granularity search if the captured scene is still overexposed or underexposed but not grossly so, wherein the search methodology performs the coarse granularity search, when selecting another one of the exposure settings, so long as one of the following is true:
- (1) there are few pixels in the captured scene, using the current exposure setting, that are above a noise threshold, and (2) there are many pixels in the captured scene that are above a maximum threshold;
- and if not then the search methodology performs the fine granularity search.
A method for generating an exposure setting, comprising:
- a) selecting one of a plurality of predetermined exposure settings as a current exposure setting for a solid state camera having a camera imager;
- b) generating a captured scene by the camera imager using the current exposure setting;
- c) selecting another one of the exposure settings to be the current setting in response to determining the captured scene as being underexposed or overexposed;
- and
- d) repeating b) and c) in response to the captured scene being determined to be underexposed or overexposed, wherein the selecting is in accordance with a coarse granularity search so long as the captured scene is either grossly overexposed or grossly underexposed, and then changes to a fine granularity search if the captured scene is still overexposed or underexposed but not grossly so, wherein the coarse granularity search is performed, when selecting another one of the exposure settings and is sequentially repeated in determining whether to transition to the fine granularity search, so long as one of the following is true:
- (1) there are few pixels in the captured scene, using the current exposure setting, that are above a noise threshold, and (2) there are many pixels in the captured scene that are above a maximum threshold;
- and if not, the fine granularity search is performed.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.