An inventive video camera imager supports an interlace scan mode, a dynamic range-widening scan (WS) mode and a sequential scan mode with a limited amount of circuitry. For this, a WS image signal of 2N lines and a sequential scan image signal of 2N lines (N is the number of scan lines of an image to be obtained) is used. Every other line of WS image signal is longer in exposure time than adjacent lines of the WS image signal. A simplified imager may support only interlace scan mode and sequential scan mode, or may support only WS mode and sequential scan mode.

A method for enhancing wide dynamic range in images. The method comprises: acquiring at least two images of a scene to be imaged, the images acquired using different exposure times; constructing for a first image an illumination mask comprising a set of two weight values distinctively identifying respective areas of pixels of high or low illumination, over-exposed or underexposed with respect to a predetermined threshold illumination value, assigning one of the values to each pixels in them, whereas the other value is assigned to other pixels of the other images; using a low-pass filter to smooth border zones between pixels of one value and pixels of the other value, thus assigning weight values in a range between the two weight values; constructing a combined image using image data of pixels of the first image and image data of pixels of the other images proportional to the weight values assigned to each pixel using the illumination mask.

For achieving high-speed continuous shooting and increasing the number of shots that can be picked-up continuously, within a limited buffer memory size, an image pickup apparatus is provided with a function of carrying out a first process of storing output data from an image pickup element on a first memory area and a function of carrying out a second process of processing data placed on the first memory area and storing the processed data on a second memory area, and is configured to perform the first and second processes in parallel.

In an electronic still camera where the signal charges accumulated corresponding to the image of a subject formed by an imaging optical system 1 are read from a CCD and displayed on an LCD via an imaging circuit, an A/D converter, a buffer memory, and a D/A converter, or recorded on a recording memory via a compression/expansion circuit, the photoelectric conversion elements of the CCD are divided into groups composed of combinations of lines spaced at specific intervals, charge accumulation start timing is controlled in such a manner that the elements belonging to the same group start to accumulate charges with the same timing and the elements belonging to another group start to accumulate charges with different timing, an AF processing section finds an in-focus position from the image signal read from each of the photoelectric conversion element groups in the CCD 5, and on the basis of the in-focus position, a focus lens group is driven.

An automatic exposure ("AE"), control apparatus to prevent exposure errors resulting from "smear." Image-capturing is performed at a single exposure time TI (I=1, 2, . . . n); a CCD output is applied with a CCD drive signal to perform an integrating operation for a signal in an AE area using an integration circuit, and then outputs integration value EI+SI at each exposure time. A shutter trigger operation presents readout of an exposure value. An integrator value En+Sn obtained just before the shutter trigger operation, and a smear value Sn' obtained just after the shutter trigger operation are provided to an exposure operation/control circuit. The exposure operation/control circuit then performs an AE operation to receive En+Sn-Sn.apprxeq.En and compares the value to a target value for determining exposure conditions, and provides an AE operation value containing almost no smear component to determine an appropriate exposure condition.