Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Tokyo Shibaura Denki Kabushiki Kaisha

Itsuzo Sato

Kazushige Ooi

Yasuo Takemura

Kikuo Saito

Toshihiro Shinohara

A plurality of shutter times are set to an image pickup device and an image is taken in a way to separate an incident light amount range into a low and a high luminance and, through the signal processing, it is possible to take an image over a wider dark to bright light amount range and, in particular, obtain a better color reproduction over a wider luminance range. In the case where an (R-Y) signal and (B-Y) signal are processed with a low-speed and high-speed shutter signal obtained and the high-speed shutter signal is subjected to logarithmic conversion and a bias signal is applied to provide a continuity with the low-speed shutter signal, processing is performed on a comparing section, characteristic conversion section and calculating section so that a greater one of the (R-Y) and (B-Y) signals is subjected to logarithmic conversion and the other signal is subjected to characteristic conversion in accordance with a value corresponding to a conversion ratio. Further, in the case where a bias voltage is applied to the greater color difference signal, a bias voltage is found in accordance with a ratio of the greater color difference signal and smaller color difference signal and applied to the other smaller color difference signal.

Image pickup apparatus for obtaining a better color image over a wider

A color image pick-up apparatus using a single planar array of solid state light-sensitive elements with a color mosaic filter. The color mosaic filter is made up of three types of elements occurring in repeating patterns which are such that luminance-type elements occur at every other element portion along both of two orthogonal direction. The signal corresponding to luminance is separated from the output signal of the solid state light-sensitive elements and delayed for one horizontal scanning period. The high frequency component of the delayed signal is extracted. The extracted high frequency component signal is added to the signal corresponding to luminance which is succeedingly produced from the solid state light-sensitive elements.

Growing community of inventors

Chigasaki, Japan

Itsuzo Sato