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:
Jan. 30, 2007
Filed:
Feb. 05, 2003
Katsuhiro Takada, Hidaka, JP;
Katsuhiro Takada, Hidaka, JP;
Olympus Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
The present invention relates to a compact and low-cost image pickup apparatus that is capable of photographing a high-quality image comparable to silver halide photographs even when the image is enlarged to 8×10″ size or larger and that enables the depth of field to be controlled with an aperture number exceeding F4. In the image pickup apparatus, an image of an object produced by an optical system () is formed on an electronic image pickup device (), thereby obtaining image information concerning the object. The optical system () has a structure capable of obtaining an aperture number equal to or larger than F4 by reducing the beam diameter. Performance required for the optical system () is such that the size of the diameter of 90% encircled energy of the point spread function by amplitude is allowed to be up to about 8 times larger than the pixel pitch corresponding to the resolvable pixel unit. The pixel pitch of the image pickup device () is not larger than about 5 micrometers. The number of pixels is not less than about 2.5 million, which meets the resolvable pixel unit.