Solid-state imaging apparatus having a solid-state imaging device and a signal processing circuit and method for driving the solid-state imaging device

Abstract

A solid-state imaging apparatus includes a solid-state imaging device and a signal processing circuit. The solid-state imaging device includes: a plurality of photoelectric converting sections provided with color filters having different spectroscopic characteristics, and each converting light incident thereon into a charge and accumulating the charge, and a plurality of vertical charge transfer sections for vertically transferring the charge read from each of the photoelectric converting sections. A plurality of reading operations to read the charges accumulated in the photoelectric converting sections to the plurality of the vertical charge transfer sections are performed within a time duration for scanning an image for one image plane, and the charges read from the photoelectric converting sections are transferred through the vertical charge transfer section separately for each of the reading operations. The signal processing circuit includes: a plurality of color separation circuits each for performing color separation of signals based on the charges read by the plurality of reading operations and transferred separately; and a synthesis circuit for synthesizing the signals sent by the color separation circuits and outputting the resultant signal.