A solid state imaging apparatus comprising: an imaging area comprising a plurality of pixels that are organized into a two-dimensional plane; a scanning circuit that reads a signal from a read region that is set in at least one of a horizontal direction and a vertical direction in the imaging area; and a control unit that sets the read region to the scanning circuit, and changes, when the read region is changed, a setting of the read region by comparing the read region before the change and the read region after the change.

An automatic exposure (AE) sensor includes a line-selecting circuit for line selection between horizontal lines and vertical lines, in addition to components of a typical AE sensor. The line-selecting circuit temporally filters a SYNC pulse for notifying a subsequent circuit about a pulse timing of an imaging signal to select a line to be read out and to cause the subsequent circuit to change an active pixel region. The number of selected lines is determined by an external input. The active pixel region is reduced when the AE sensor is incorporated in a device having a low performance CPU, thereby reducing load on the CPU. The active pixel region is increased when the AE sensor is incorporated in a device having a high performance CPU, thereby effectively using the CPU performance to achieve higher density control.

Image quality degrading components can be eliminated from a contour correction signal of high frequency region that is used for contour correction. A filtering section extracts a high frequency region signal from a signal inputted from a VLPF. A mask generating section generates a mask by masking image quality degrading components (e.g., ringing components) contained in the extracted signal. A gain factor generating section generates a gain factor that eliminates image quality degrading components on the basis of the mask. A multiplier multiplies the extracted signal by the gain factor, and outputs an adder a resultant signal (horizontal contour correction signal free from the image quality degrading components). Since the horizontal contour correction signal is generated by eliminating the image quality degrading components from the high frequency region signal, the occurrence of ringing and the like can be suppressed to ensure excellent image quality.

An object of this invention is to quickly complete white balance calculation in photographing. To achieve this object, an image sensing apparatus includes an image sensing element in which a line on which first and second color filters are arranged and a line on which first and third color filters are arranged are alternately arrayed on pixels, an image sensing controller which forms an image of one frame by n fields (n is an odd number), and reads out pixel data of the image sensing element so as to contain all color components in each 1-field period, a white balance calculation device which performs process on the basis of image data read out from the image sensing element by the image sensing controller, and starts the process before read of one frame from the image sensing element is completed by the image sensing controller.

A method for constructing a high-resolution image includes constructing a second plurality of time-sequential frames having a second resolution from a first plurality of time-sequential frames having a first resolution, the second resolution being lower than the first resolution, and constructing an image from the second plurality of time sequential frames, the image having a resolution that is higher than the second resolution.