1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus and a related processing method capable of enlarging a dynamic range while suppressing generation of color mixture.
2. Description of the Related Art
A solid-state image sensor, such as a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS), can be used in a digital camera or other imaging apparatuses. However, compared to general silver-halide photography, the solid-state image sensor has a narrow dynamic range. To solve this drawback, there are various dynamic range enlarging methods (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471).
For example, according to an image sensor discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471, saturated charge overflows a photoelectric conversion section and flows into a reading section if a light quantity of incident light exceeds a saturation light quantity of the photoelectric conversion section. The reading section reads an overflow amount of the electric charge.
However, a reading section of an actually used image sensor is not arranged to realize the reading mechanism discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471. Therefore, when the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-18471 is applied to an ordinary image sensor, the generation of color mixture in the reading section is much greater compared to that in the photoelectric conversion section.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds