Digital camera systems and methods are described that provide a color digital camera with direct luminance detection. The luminance signals are obtained directly from a broadband image sensor channel without interpolation of RGB data. The chrominance signals are obtained from one or more additional image sensor channels comprising red and/or blue color band detection capability. The red and blue signals are directly combined with the luminance image sensor channel signals. The digital camera generates and outputs an image in YCrCb color space by directly combining outputs of the broadband, red and blue sensors.

Digital camera systems and methods are described that provide a color digital camera with direct luminance detection. The luminance signals are obtained directly from a broadband image sensor channel without interpolation of RGB data. The chrominance signals are obtained from one or more additional image sensor channels comprising red and/or blue color band detection capability. The red and blue signals are directly combined with the luminance image sensor channel signals. The digital camera generates and outputs an image in YCrCb color space by directly combining outputs of the broadband, red and blue sensors.

For processing a signal from an event-based sensor having an array of sensing elements facing a scene, the method comprises: receiving the signal including, for each sensing element, successive events originating from said sensing element depending on variations of incident light from the scene; analyzing the signal to detect a frequency pattern in a light profile sensed by at least one sensing element; and extracting information from the scene in response to detection of the frequency pattern.

A vehicular image pickup device includes an image capturing unit and a processing unit. The image capturing unit captures a plurality of driving images sequentially. The driving images each include an object image. The processing unit performs an image analysis on two of the plurality of driving images to obtain a variance of the object image and sets a shutter speed of the image capturing unit according to the variance.

A photoelectric conversion apparatus includes a semiconductor substrate, a floating diffusion, an amplifying transistor, first and second contact plugs, a wire, and a metal portion. The semiconductor substrate has a first plane and a second plane to be entered by light, and includes a photoelectric conversion element. The amplifying transistor includes a first gate electrode. The first contact plug is connected to the floating diffusion. The second contact plug is connected to the first gate electrode. The wire is configured to electrically connect the first gate electrode and the floating diffusion to each other. The metal portion, which is arranged between the first plane and a third plane, covers at least a part of the photoelectric conversion element in a planar view, and has an opening over which at least a part of the wire is superimposed in a planar view.

Introduced here are light sources for flash photography configured to produce high-fidelity white light that is tunable over a broader range of correlated color temperatures (CCTs) than conventional flash technologies. The light source can include multiple independently controllable color channels representing illuminants (e.g., light-emitting diodes) of different colors with varying degrees of saturation. Operating collectively, the multiple color channels can produce a high spectral quality white light corresponding to different CCTs (e.g., “warm” white light having a red hue, “cool” white light having a blue hue). Operating independently, these same color channels can be pre-flashed in a variety of prescribed sequences to probe the spectral characteristics of a scene, thereby allowing for an enhanced, spectrally matched white flash as well as collecting per-pixel reflectivity data that can be later used in during post processing of the captured image.

For processing a signal from an event-based sensor having an array of sensing elements facing a scene, the method comprises: receiving the signal including, for each sensing element, successive events originating from said sensing element depending on variations of incident light from the scene; analyzing the signal to detect a frequency pattern in a light profile sensed by at least one sensing element; and extracting information from the scene in response to detection of the frequency pattern.

The present disclosure relates to an image-capturing apparatus, an image-capturing method, and an image-capturing device that allow reduction of an influence of diffraction due to opening sections of a mask in lensless image-capturing. Before a mask, a band-pass filter that is divided into a plurality of areas, each of which transmits incident light in a different wavelength band, is provided, and the mask that includes opening sections, and modulates the incident light, which has been transmitted through the band-pass filter, in the wavelength bands that are different for the individual areas is provided. The opening sections of the mask have such unit sizes that blurring resulting from diffraction which occurs to each wavelength of the incident light is minimized. The present disclosure can be applied to a lensless image-capturing apparatus.

In an imaging apparatus as an embodiment, a drive unit drives pixels so that a photoelectric conversion unit alternately performs accumulation of charges in a first exposure period and accumulation of charges in a second exposure period having different length from the first exposure period. A control unit performs a first exposure in a first cycle and performs a second exposure in second cycle when a result of detection indicates that a subject is not blinking. Further, the control unit performs a first exposure in a cycle different from the first cycle when the result of detection indicates that the subject is blinking.

An image capture device includes: an image capture parameter determination unit configured to determine an exposure time when an image of a display device on which a display character is formed by a plurality of segment light emitters that flash on and off asynchronously at predetermined intervals is captured; a captured image acquisition unit configured to, in accordance with a number of captured images and image capture interval determined on the basis of the exposure time and a formation required period that is required for the display device to form the display character by sequentially turning on any one of the plurality of segment light emitters, acquire the determined number of captured images generated by capturing the image of the display device; and a composition unit configured to generate a composite image obtained by compositing the determined number of captured images.