Conventionally, a method for a photograph you take of yourself with a portable terminal (e.g., mobile telephone) including an image sensor or with an image pickup apparatus such as a digital camera has been widely known. Such a photograph is called selfie.
When a user takes a selfie, the user generally takes a selfie by holding an image pickup apparatus in his or her hand and pressing a shutter button while checking a live view image displayed on a display unit. In recent years, such a style for taking selfies is becoming globally popular, in particular, among young women.
A portable terminal is generally equipped with a camera (sub-camera) at an upper position of a display unit. This camera is used for taking a selfie. However, since the display unit of the digital camera is generally located on an opposite side of an image pickup unit, it is difficult for the user to take a selfie while checking a live view image displayed on the display unit as long as such a positional relationship between the display unit and the image pickup unit is kept. In view of this, a method of rotating the display unit by 180 degrees for directing the display unit to the image pickup unit is sometimes used (e.g., see Patent Literature 1).
In general, for taking a selfie, in addition to a method of performing image pickup when a shutter button is pressed (instant-shutter function), a method of performing image pickup when a timer counts down to zero (self-timer function) is used (e.g., see Patent Literature 2).
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds