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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8115859 | Method for controlling auto-exposure An auto-exposure control method includes: creating an exposure table and an analog gain table including an exposure time and an analog gain of an image sensor set according to an index, respectively; calculating an average luminance value of an image frame obtained ... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8107003 | Image sensing apparatus with electronic shutter function and mechanical shutter function, and image sensing method An image sensing apparatus having an electronic shutter for controlling the charge accumulation time of an image sensing element and a mechanical shutter for releasing/shielding an optical path to the image sensing element includes an electronic shutter mode of cont... | 01/31/2012 |
| 8077256 | Scene-aware automatic-exposure control A scene-aware auto-exposure control process stabilizes changes in a camera's auto-exposure settings so as to reduce lighting and color flicker during image capture operations. A metric, referred to as the Modified Adjusted Luminance (MAL) metric, is defined to remai... | 12/13/2011 |
| 8035728 | Method and apparatus providing rule-based auto exposure technique preserving scene dynamic range A method and apparatus for applying exposure compensation to an image. Exposure correction limits inclusion of, but does not ignore, image highlights and lowlights. ... | 10/11/2011 |
| 8035729 | Imaging apparatus and program thereof In a digital camera 1, in an automatic shooting stand-by state, when judged at Step S26 that an automatic shooting condition has been satisfied (N at Step S26), whether or not to issue an AE re-processing command is judged. In other words, wheth... | 10/11/2011 |
| 8009225 | Imaging apparatus having automatic exposure control unit An imaging apparatus includes an automatic exposure control unit that changes an exposure value based on luminance detected by a luminance detection unit for detecting luminance of an imaging screen, and a luminance changing amount detection unit that detects a lumi... | 08/30/2011 |
| 7978258 | Automatic exposure time selection for imaging tissue The invention relates to a system for automatically adjusting an exposure time to improve or otherwise optimize a dynamic range of a digital image. The system includes a camera configured to capture an image of a subject within the field of view at a first exposure ... | 07/12/2011 |
| 7973853 | Image pickup device, automatic focusing method, automatic exposure method calculating an exposure based on a detected face An image pickup device provided with an automatic exposure function includes an image pickup unit configured to input image data corresponding to a subject, a face detection unit configured to detect a human face from the image data input from the image pickup unit,... | 07/05/2011 |
| 7940325 | Apparatus and method of capturing images having optimized quality under night scene conditions An apparatus and method of capturing images having an optimized quality during night time conditions is provided. The apparatus for capturing images includes an image-capturing unit that captures an light from an object and generates a first digital image, a night-s... | 05/10/2011 |
| 7889274 | Image input apparatus An image input apparatus can acquire an image with a high contrast without saturating a camera output even for a subject having a large light and dark difference while achieving a wide dynamic range. An image sensor has an input-output characteristic varying with a ... | 02/15/2011 |
| 7884879 | Image sensing apparatus having exposure control and method therefor In an image sensing apparatus and exposure control method, detecting an object that satisfies a certain preset condition from image data obtained by image sensing with an image sensing element, and carrying out photometry on the image data as a whole to acquire an o... | 02/08/2011 |
| 7859589 | Imaging apparatus, and exposure control apparatus, method, and program An imaging apparatus for capturing an image using a solid-state imaging device includes the following elements. One or more signal correction units correct an image signal obtained by capturing the image on a color component basis. A luminance detection unit detects... | 12/28/2010 |
| 7847857 | Imaging device and exposure control method for imaging device An imaging device includes a sensor that is color coded by using high-sensitivity pixels having higher sensitivity to incident light than chromatic color pixels and an automatic exposure function that allows the imaging device to control exposure according to illumi... | 12/07/2010 |
| 7821570 | Adjusting digital image exposure and tone scale A method of adjusting exposure of a digital camera based on range information, including a digital camera capturing a first digital image at a selected exposure of a scene having objects; providing range information having two or more range values indicating the dis... | 10/26/2010 |
| 7817206 | Determining a final exposure setting automatically for a solid state camera without a separate light metering circuit 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 sc... | 10/19/2010 |
| 7787045 | Digital camera having a control portion for light measurement A digital camera of the present invention includes a microcomputer 110 having a live view mode controlling so that image data generated by a CMOS sensor 130 or image data obtained by subjecting the image data generated by the CMOS sensor 130 to ... | 08/31/2010 |
| 7777805 | Image capturing apparatus for performing photography in a live view display state and control method thereof This invention allows executing proper photometry within a short time even when a single-lens reflex type image capturing apparatus performs flash photography using an electronic viewfinder. When performing photography from a live view display state using a flash un... | 08/17/2010 |
| 7738031 | Image input device In an image input device including a multistage aperture (13) which reduces a quantity of light by changing an aperture, and an ND filter (15) which reduces a quantity of light by changing transmittance of passing light, if ghosts tend to occur due to ... | 06/15/2010 |
| 7683964 | Image capturing apparatus and image capturing method An image capturing apparatus which keeps down an increase in the amount of processing at the time of exposure determination and at the same time enables effective utilization of the improved photometry resolution for back light detection, an which has a luminance ca... | 03/23/2010 |
| 7667765 | Digital imaging device shutter calibration method and apparatus using multiple exposures of a single field The shutter of a digital imaging device may be calibrated by comparing a characteristic of two separate exposures obtained from a single field of the device's imaging sensor during a single exposure cycle. Calibrating the shutter in this manner facilitates the accur... | 02/23/2010 |
| 7667764 | Image sensing apparatus An image sensing apparatus is constructed in such a manner that a calculation priority setter 5111 (5111a) sets a priority between exposure amount control by an exposure amount control parameter calculator 511 (511a) serving... | 02/23/2010 |
| 7626632 | Method and apparatus for correcting digital images The present invention provides methods, systems, and computer-program products for correcting image streaking, light scattering, and other effects in digital images generated by multispectral sensors. An image frame, a plurality of image frames from the digital sens... | 12/01/2009 |
| 7623179 | Storage medium and method to control auto exposure by the same A method and a storage medium for auto exposure control are provided. A desired image is divided into a plurality of sample blocks, each includes red, green, and blue subpixels. A maximum exposure ratio and an average exposure ratio are obtained according to the max... | 11/24/2009 |
| 7576797 | Automatic white balancing via illuminant scoring autoexposure by neural network mapping Automatic white balancing and/or autoexposure as useful in a digital camera extracts color channel gains from comparisons of image colors with reference colors under various color temperature illuminants and/or extracts exposure settings from illuminance mean, illum... | 08/18/2009 |
| 7535511 | Automatic exposure control method and automatic exposure compensation apparatus An automatic exposure control method and compensation apparatus are disclosed. It includes a coordinate system having sub-ranges with different corresponding exposure compensation values. It includes the setting of bright and dark regions threshold values and the ca... | 05/19/2009 |
| 7522210 | Digital camera for automatically setting a proper exposure of both back round and object In a first exposure condition calculating operation, proper exposure conditions in imaging are calculated by the imaging element including the effective exposure time and ISO sensitivity without preliminary light emission from the strobo part. In a second exposure c... | 04/21/2009 |
| 7492412 | Solid-state image pickup apparatus reducing record data with reproduction image quality maintained high and a method for the same A solid-state image pickup apparatus includes a low-sensitivity decision section made up of an arithmetic circuit and a data decision circuit. During RAW mode recording operation, the arithmetic circuit executes sensitivity correction on low-sensitivity pixel data. ... | 02/17/2009 |
| 7443443 | Method and apparatus for enhancing flash and ambient images A method and system generate an enhanced output image. A first image is acquired of a scene illuminated by a first illumination condition. A second image is acquired of the scene illuminated by a second illumination condition. First and second gradient images are de... | 10/28/2008 |
| 7443442 | Image apparatus and method for compensating for high and low luminance image portions via exposure control and gamma correction A detecting section for detecting a high-luminance object signal is provided. By using resulting detection data, an exposure control is performed so that the white levels of high-luminance objects do not become unduly high. Low-luminance objects are blackened under ... | 10/28/2008 |
| 7440022 | Image sensing apparatus with electronic shutter function and mechanical shutter function, and image sensing method An image sensing apparatus having an electronic shutter for controlling the charge accumulation time of an image sensing element and a mechanical shutter for releasing/shielding an optical path to the image sensing element includes an electronic shutter mode of cont... | 10/21/2008 |
| 7440012 | Method and apparatus for optimizing image sensor noise and dynamic range A method and apparatus for optimizing the voltage supply of an image sensor pixel array to minimize pixel noise and maximize dynamic range is disclosed. The voltage supply is adjusted in response to the exposure level of the pixel array when it captures an image. Th... | 10/21/2008 |
| 7436452 | Method and apparatus for reduction of residual signal in digital images captured by image sensors A method for reducing residual signal from a first image from appearing in a second image, the method includes the steps of capturing the first image on an image sensor having a known exposure that includes exposure time and a peak light intensity; estimating a flus... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7432953 | Image-taking apparatus detecting vibration and correcting image blurring An image-taking apparatus which improves accuracy of taken images by correcting image blurring is disclosed. The image-taking apparatus comprises an image pickup element which photoelectrically converts an object image formed by an image-taking optical system; a det... | 10/07/2008 |
| 7430371 | Mobile communications terminal for compensating automatic exposure of camera and method thereof A method for compensating an automatic exposure of a camera in a mobile communication terminal. The method includes determining a presumptive error value based on an average luminance value of an input current image frame and a particular target luminance value, sel... | 09/30/2008 |
| 7428011 | Wide dynamic range electronic image recording and reproducing system The electronic camera has an imaging device that images a subject with subject reflectance R (%) with a dynamic range wider than that at displaying or printing to acquire image data and a recording device that converts the image data acquired by the imaging device w... | 09/23/2008 |
| 7414666 | Portable device having exposure-adjustable image pick-up unit and exposure adjusting device A portable camera-phone has a strobe consisting of LEDs emitting light with a determined quantity of light emission, as an auxiliary light source for image pick-up of an object by a camera. In an image pick-up mode, the light emission quantity is adjusted repeatedly... | 08/19/2008 |
| 7411626 | Image acquiring apparatus and image acquiring method An image acquiring apparatus includes a pixel shifting section which changes the relative position between luminous flux incident on an imaging element and the imaging element to a plurality of specific positions, an imaging section which photographs in at least one... | 08/12/2008 |
| 7411616 | Exposure controller for camera attached to electronic equipment A photographic image is divided into a central area and a surrounding area, and video signals for the central and surrounding areas are integrated by an area integrator circuit. When an operator of video camera attached to a notebook personal computer is to photogra... | 08/12/2008 |
| 7409101 | Image enhancement for aerial refueling operations Methods and apparatus for digitally enhancing images are disclosed. In one embodiment, a method includes analyzing an acquired image to provide a high sensitive low light image and a low sensitive high light image, and then summing the high sensitive low light image... | 08/05/2008 |
| 7403231 | Camera with exposure correction dependent upon brightness detected in a frame with the lowest brightness compared to average brightness Backlight correction by the following steps. The location of a dark distribution is determined, and a dark distribution histogram ratio is calculated. Next, the location of a bright distribution is determined, and a high-brightness slice set value is set. A determin... | 07/22/2008 |
