Electric camera

An electric camera comprising:

• an image sensing device with a light receiving surface having an array of vertically and horizontally arranged pixels including N vertically arranged pixels, where N is an integer greater than or equal to three times an integer of M which is a number of effective scanning lines of a display screen of a television system;
• a driver configured to drive the image sensing device to vertically mix or cull signals accumulated in individual pixels, at intervals of K pixels, in order to produce a plurality of lines of output signals which correspond to the M effective scanning lines, where K is an integer less than or equal to a whole number portion of a quotient of N divided by M;
• an input unit configured to enable a user to input a request to continuously change a magnification factor to magnify an output image;
• and
• a signal processing unit configured to generate image signals of the output image by using the output signals of the image sensing device,
• wherein the display screen displays the output image,
• wherein the image sensing device is driven in:
• a first state in which intervals of K1 pixels in a first area on the image sensing device are vertically mixed or culled, and
• a second state in which intervals of K2 pixels in a second area on the image sensing device are vertically mixed or culled, where a value of K2 is smaller than a value of K1,
• wherein the first state switches to the second state in response to the request to continuously change the magnification factor, and
• wherein M, K1, and K2 are positive integers greater than 1.

An image sensing method of an electric camera, comprising:

• sensing light with a light receiving surface having an array of vertically and horizontally arranged pixels including N vertically arranged pixels, where N is an integer greater than or equal to three times an integer of M which is a number of effective scanning lines of a display screen of a television system;
• driving the image sensing device to vertically mix or cull signals accumulated in individual pixels, at intervals of K pixels, in order to produce a plurality of lines of output signals which correspond to the M effective scanning lines, where K is an integer less than or equal to a whole number portion of a quotient of N divided by M;
• receiving a request to continuously change a magnification factor to magnify an output image;
• generating image signals of the output image by using the output signals of the image sensing device;
• and
• displaying the output image on the display screen,
• wherein the image sensing device is driven in:
• a first state in which intervals of K1 pixels in a first area on the image sensing device are vertically mixed or culled, and
• a second state in which intervals of K2 pixels in a second area on the image sensing device are vertically mixed or culled, where a value of K2 is smaller than a value of K1,
• wherein the first state switches to the second state in response to receiving the request to continuously change the magnification factor, and
• wherein M, K1, and K2 are positive integers greater than 1.