Sony Corporation

Hirofumi Nomura

Masahiro Ito

Masaya Kinoshita

Makibi Nakamura

Miyuki Okada

Takashi Tsujimura

Koichiro Ishigami

Hirotaka Hirano

Jinyo Kumaki

An image pickup device includes: an image pickup optical system configured to form a subject image; an image pickup element configured to generate a picked-up image from the subject image formed by the image pickup optical system; an image blur detecting section configured to output an image blur signal using a motion detecting sensor; an arithmetic section configured to calculate an amount of image blur correction including an amount of optical correction and an amount of electronic correction on a basis of the image blur signal; an optical image blur correcting section configured to move at least one of an optical element forming a part of the image pickup optical system and the image pickup element in accordance with the amount of optical correction; and an electronic image blur correcting section configured to correct electronically an image blur of the picked-up image by image processing based on the amount of electronic correction.

Image pickup device, image blur correcting method, and program

Provided is an image process apparatus for processing a color image signal, including: an integration unit integrating at least one of each of color signals of the color image signal or a brightness signal obtained from the color image signal over at least one horizontal period; a normalization unit normalizing an integration value obtained by the integration unit and a difference between the integration values of adjacent fields or frames obtained by the integration unit; a frequency analysis unit extracting spectrum of output values of the normalization unit; a flicker component estimating unit estimating a flicker component from the spectrum extracted by the frequency analysis unit; an index generating unit calculating an index representing a degree that a photographing light source is estimated to a fluorescent lamp, based on an estimated result of the flicker component estimating unit; and a color balance control unit calculating a color balance control value of the color image signal according to the index from the index generating unit.

Image process apparatus and method for processing a color image signal

In an image taking apparatus, an imaging unit senses an image of a subject, and a face detection unit detects a face in the image sensed by the imaging unit. A motion detection unit detects an amount of face motion indicating an amount of shake of an area of the face detected by the face detection unit in the image sensed by the imaging unit and also detects an amount of background motion indicating an amount of shake of an area other than the face area. A shake correction unit corrects the shake of the image sensed by the imaging unit according to the amount of face motion and the amount of background motion detected by the motion detection unit.

Image taking apparatus with shake correction, image processing apparatus with shake correction, image processing method with shake correction, and image processing program with shake correction

It is now possible to correct flicker without the risk of correcting flicker by error if a moving subject exists in the scene by using values detected in the past in order to prevent degradation of image quality from taking place. The integral value obtained by integrating an input video signal that includes a flicker component over not less than a horizontal period and the difference value between integral values of adjacent fields or frames is normalized. Then, the amplitude component and the phase component of the flicker component are estimated. A flicker coefficient for canceling the amplitude component and the phase component of the flicker component estimated is generated on the basis of the probability of being under the lighting of a fluorescent lamp. The flicker coefficient and the input video signal are computationally determined to obtain a video signal with a reduced flicker component.

Flicker reduction method, flicker reduction circuit and image pickup apparatus

The present invention provides an image pick up apparatus having means for cumulatively adding image signals and storing the image signals in memory, which is capable of preventing cumulative addition of image signals for which camera-shake correction is insufficient and improving picture quality of image signals stored in memory.

Image pickup apparatus and image pickup method

An image pickup apparatus that is capable of generating a still image whose S/N ratio is improved without narrowing the angle of view includes an image pickup having an image pickup element, in which an area for camera-shake correction is absent, for picking up an image of a subject; a camera-shake correcting unit for correcting picked-up image data of the image pickup according to a camera-shake component applied to the image pickup; and a still image generating unit having a function for determining whether a camera-shake image is present in an image pickup area of the image pickup and operative to find, for each coordinate point, an average of a cumulatively added image in which image data corrected by the camera-shake correcting unit within a predetermined time are added together, so as to generate a still image.

Image pickup apparatus and camera-shake correcting method therefor

In an image pickup device, a controller includes a surplus area calculation unit to detect a surplus area for use in correcting camera shake based upon a size of an effective area on an image pickup surface and a size of an efficient area extracted in response to camera shake. Thus, this image pickup device can prevent a troublesome aspect in which camera shake correction reaches the correction end from occurring, even when a large camera shake that is beyond the surplus area occurs.

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Saitama, Japan

Hirofumi Nomura