The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 25, 2004
Filed:
Sep. 09, 1999
Tetsuji Shono, Saitama, JP;
PENTAX Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An SLR digital still camera includes a quick return half mirror which allows object-carrying light, transmitted through a photographing lens, to be partly incident on a finder optical system and partly incident on an image pick-up device; a mirror driving device for driving the half mirror between a viewing position and a photographing position; a controller for calculating a displacement from a provisional focus position, based on an electrical signal obtained by a photo-electric conversion of the object-carrying light made incident on the image pick-up device through the half mirror when said half mirror is in the viewing position, to obtain a focusing position in which the photographing lens is focused on an object to be photographed when the half mirror is retracted from the photographing light path; a memory for storing said focus position; and a drive mechanism that moves one of the photographing lens and the image pick-up device in accordance with the focus position stored in the memory when the half mirror is moved to the photographing position upon a photographing operation, so that an in-focus image of the photographing lens is formed on the image pick-up device.