JP2007180912A - Photographing apparatus, electronic apparatus, photographing method, program, and recording medium - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a technology capable of simply obtaining a photographed image wherein a blur is inconspicuous by controlling resolution in such a way that the blur of the photographed image can hardly be visually recognized according to the detected value of a camera shake amount. <P>SOLUTION: A digital camera 10 disclosed herein provided with a photographing section 20 for generating photographed image data 210 of a photographed image on the basis of an electric signal output from an image sensor 22 as shown in Fig. 1 includes: an angular velocity detection section 50 for detecting a camera shake amount at photographing; and a control section 50 that brings the resolution of the photographed image data 210 generated by the photographing section 20 into a resolution at which the blur of the photographed image can hardly be visually recognized on the basis of a detected value of the camera shake amount. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a technique for making a blur occurring in a photographed image inconspicuous to the extent that it is difficult to recognize.

Conventionally, image change detection means for detecting an image change from a plurality of captured image data has been provided, and when a moving subject is photographed, the movement of the subject in the screen is detected by the image change detection means, and the movement of the subject is detected. It is known that an image at the time of change can be stored so that an image can be taken without blur while matching the movement of the subject (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-70012

However, in the conventional technique, since it is necessary to store a plurality of image data, a storage device having a relatively large capacity is required, and a motion detection circuit is further required, which increases the cost. There is also a problem that processing time is required due to complicated processing for motion detection.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described circumstances, and an object thereof is to provide a photographing apparatus, an electronic apparatus, a photographing method, a program, and a recording medium that can easily obtain a photographed image that is not noticeable. .

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention is a photographing apparatus including photographing means for generating image data of a photographed image based on an electrical signal output from a photographing element, and detects a blur amount during photographing. A blur amount detection unit; and a control unit configured to set a resolution of image data generated by the photographing unit based on a detection value of the blur amount so that the blur of the photographed image is hardly visually recognized. An imaging device is provided.
According to the present invention, since the resolution of the image data is set to a resolution that makes it difficult for the blur of the captured image to be visually recognized according to the detection value of the blur amount, an image in which the blur is not noticeable can be obtained.
In particular, according to the present invention, it is not necessary to shoot a plurality of images as in the prior art, and complicated processing such as motion detection processing is not required. Can be obtained.

Here, in the above-described invention, it is desirable that the control unit is configured to lower the resolution of the image data as the blur amount is larger.
In the above invention, it is preferable that the control means changes the resolution by changing the image size of the image data.
According to this desirable configuration, as the blur amount increases, the image size is reduced and the resolution is reduced, and the data amount of the image data is reduced. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the storage capacity for storing the image data. There is no.

In the above invention, it is preferable that the image processing unit further includes an image processing unit that performs a filtering process for compensating the image quality when the resolution of the image data is lowered.
According to this desirable configuration, even when the image size is reduced and the resolution is lowered, filter processing is performed by the image processing means, so that deterioration of image quality can be suppressed.
Note that an electronic apparatus provided with a photographing apparatus according to any one of the above inventions also corresponds to the present invention.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a photographing method for a photographing apparatus including photographing means for generating image data of a photographed image based on an electrical signal output from a photographing element,
A blur amount detecting means for detecting a blur amount at the time of shooting is provided, and based on the blur amount, the resolution of the image data of the shot image is set to a resolution that makes it difficult for the blur generated in the shot image to be visually recognized. Provide a shooting method.

  In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a photographing unit that generates image data of a photographed image based on an electrical signal output from the photographing element, and a blur amount detecting unit that detects a blur amount during photographing. And a function of setting the resolution of the image data generated by the imaging unit to a resolution that makes it difficult for the blur of the captured image to be visually recognized based on the detection value of the blur amount. Provide a program to

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a photographing unit that generates image data of a photographed image based on an electrical signal output from the photographing element, and a blur amount detecting unit that detects a blur amount during photographing. A program is recorded that causes a photographing apparatus provided with a function of setting the resolution of image data generated by the photographing unit to be a resolution at which blur of the photographed image is difficult to be visually recognized based on the detection value of the blur amount. A computer-readable recording medium is provided.
According to the electronic device, the photographing method, the program, and the recording medium according to the present invention, as in the above-described photographing apparatus, the resolution of the image data is a resolution that makes it difficult for the blur of the photographed image to be visually recognized according to the detection value of the blur amount. Therefore, it is possible to obtain an image in which blurring is not noticeable.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a digital camera (photographing apparatus) 10 according to the present embodiment. The digital camera 10 includes an imaging unit 20, a display unit 30, an operation unit 40, an angular velocity detection unit 50, a control unit 60, an external recording / playback unit 70, and a removal memory 80.
The photographing unit 20 includes an optical system 21, an image sensor 22, an analog front end (AFE) unit 23, an image processing unit 24, and a compression / decompression unit 25. The optical system 21 includes a plurality of lenses 21a, a diaphragm 21b, and the like. Under the control of the control unit 60, one of the lenses 21a and the diaphragm 21b is driven to form an object on the light receiving surface of the image sensor 22. .

  The image sensor 22 is an image pickup device including photoelectric conversion elements discretely arranged in a two-dimensional space and charge transfer elements such as a CCD (Charge Coupled Device), and so-called CCD image sensors, CMOS image sensors, and the like are applied. Has been. Under the control of the control unit 60, the image sensor 22 accumulates charges obtained by photoelectrically converting the subject image formed on the light receiving surface for each photoelectric conversion element for a certain period of time, and according to the amount of light received for each photoelectric conversion element. The electrical signal is output to the AFE unit 23. The exposure amount of the image sensor 22 is determined by the F value of the diaphragm 21b and the opening time of a mechanical shutter (not shown) provided between the optical system 21 and the image sensor 22, and the exposure amount at the time of shooting is determined by the control unit. 60 is determined based on the set shutter speed and exposure time. Further, the exposure time of the image sensor 22 may be adjusted by electrically controlling the charge accumulation time itself of the image sensor 22.

The AFE unit 23 quantizes the electrical signal output from the image sensor 22 into a digital signal by an AD converter, generates RAW data 200 as unprocessed original image data, and outputs it to the image processing unit 24. Front End) Analog signal processing circuit.
The image processing unit 24 performs image formation processing, white balance correction, gamma correction, and the like on the RAW data 200 to form a color image having three primary color (RGB) shading levels, and generates image data. This is output to the unit 25.
The compression / decompression unit 25 compresses the image data output from the image processing unit 24 based on a predetermined compression / decompression standard such as JPEG (Joint Photographic coding Experts Group) under the control of the control unit 60. When the captured image data 210 is generated and output to the external recording / reproducing unit 70, and the captured image data 210 is displayed on the display unit 30, the captured image data 210 is expanded based on the compression / decompression standard. This is output to the control unit 60.
The external recording / reproducing unit 70 records the captured image data 210 in the removable memory 80 under the control of the control unit 60. Further, the external recording / reproducing unit 70 reads out the captured image data 210 recorded in the removable memory 80 under the control of the control unit 60 and outputs it to the compression / decompression unit 25. As the removable memory 80, a semiconductor memory, an optical disk, a magnetic disk, a hard disk, or the like is applied.

The display unit 30 includes a liquid crystal display, a liquid crystal drive unit, and the like, and functions as an information output unit that displays various information such as an operation menu and a captured image under the control of the control unit 60. The digital camera 10 includes at least a shooting mode for shooting a still image and a playback mode for playing back a shot still image as operation modes. The display unit 30 includes, for example, a shooting mode 20 in the shooting mode. In the case of the playback mode, the captured image of the captured image data 210 read out from the removal memory 80 by the external recording / reproducing unit 70 and expanded by the compression / decompression unit 25 is displayed. Is done.
The operation unit 40 has a plurality of operators that are operated by a photographer. These operators include a push-type shutter button 41a for inputting an instruction to start shooting, and an operation for setting an operation mode and shooting conditions. A key is provided. In order to prevent the occurrence of camera shake due to the pressing operation of the shutter button 41a, the digital camera 10 is provided with voice input means and voice recognition means, and the user inputs a shooting instruction by voice instead of the operation of the shutter button 41a. You may comprise.

  The angular velocity detection unit 50 functions as a shake amount detecting means for detecting the shake amount of the digital camera 10, and as shown in FIG. 2, the vertical direction of the frame FL to be imaged (hereinafter defined as the X axis). And an Y-axis gyro sensor 52 for detecting the angular velocity in the left-right direction (hereinafter referred to as the Y-axis). The angular velocity detection unit 50 outputs an angular velocity detection signal having a voltage value corresponding to each angular velocity of the X axis and the Y axis to the control unit 60 by the two gyro sensors 51 and 52.

  The control unit 60 functions as a computer that controls each unit of the digital camera 10, and as shown in FIG. 1, a CPU 61 that executes various programs and performs arithmetic processing, a control program 100 that is executed by the CPU 61, and various types. A rewritable flash ROM (hereinafter simply referred to as “ROM”) 62 for storing data and a RAM 63 functioning as a work area for temporarily storing the calculation results of the CPU 61 and various data.

  The control program 100 can be recorded and distributed on a computer-readable recording medium 110 such as a magnetic recording medium, an optical recording medium, or a semiconductor recording medium, or can be downloaded from a distribution server on a communication network. Further, the personal computer and the digital camera 10 are communicably connected by a cable or the like, and the control program 100 of the recording medium 110 read by the personal computer is output to the digital camera 10, whereby the control program 100 is stored in the ROM 62. It is also possible to do.

  The flash ROM 62 stores image size setting data 250 that defines the image size D of the captured image data 210 stored in the removable memory 80 according to the amount of blur. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 3, the image size setting data 250 visually recognizes the shake amount Q detected by the angular velocity detection unit 50 at the time of shooting and the shake generated in the shot image according to the shake amount Q. The correspondence with the image size D that is difficult to perform is defined in advance. In the present embodiment, the blur amount Q is indicated by the number of pixels of the image, and the image size D ranges from “4M” as an example of the highest resolution to “QVGA” as an example of the lowest resolution. The image size D of the photographed image data 210, that is, the resolution is set to decrease stepwise as the blur amount Q increases.

  In the digital camera 10, the image size D is adjusted according to the normal shooting mode in which the shot image data 210 is generated with the image size D selected by the user and the amount of blur Q as the shooting mode. An automatic adjustment shooting mode is selectable. Then, when this automatic adjustment shooting mode is selected, the image size D of the shot image data 210 is determined according to the amount of blur Q based on the image size setting data 250 so that the blur generated in the shot image is difficult to see and is not noticeable. The operation at this time will be described in detail with reference to FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of the photographing process in the automatic adjustment photographing mode.
As shown in this figure, when the automatic adjustment shooting mode is selected, the control unit 60 monitors the pressing operation of the shutter button 41a (speech input indicating a shooting instruction when a voice operation is possible), and the user To determine whether or not a shooting instruction indicating the start of shooting has been issued (step S1). If no shooting instruction has been given (step S1: No), the control unit 60 continues to monitor the pressing operation of the shutter button 41a. If a shooting instruction has been given (step S1: Yes), exposure is performed. Is started to start photographing, and the acquisition of the angular velocity detection signal from the angular velocity detector 50 is started (step S2). Then, the control unit 60 determines whether or not the shooting is completed after a time corresponding to a predetermined shutter speed (exposure time) has elapsed (step S3), and when the shooting is not completed (step S3). : No), the processing procedure is returned to step S2 to continue photographing.

On the other hand, when the shooting is finished (step S3: Yes), the control unit 60 calculates the shake amount Q based on the angular velocity detection signal at the time of shooting acquired in step S2 (step S4). Specifically, the control unit 60 calculates an angle by time-integrating the angular velocity generated at the time of photographing indicated by the angular velocity detection signal according to the detection of the angular velocity, and calculates the shake amount Q based on the angle. .
Next, the control unit 60 determines an image size D corresponding to the blur amount Q based on the image size setting data 250 (step S5), and outputs the image size D to the compression / decompression unit 25, so that the image Captured image data 210 of size D is generated and stored in the removable memory 80 (step S6).

As described above, according to the present embodiment, the image size D that makes it difficult to visually recognize the blur generated in the captured image due to the amount of blur Q generated at the time of shooting, that is, the captured image data 210 is stored at the resolution. When the image data 210 is displayed on the display unit 30 or the like, it is possible to make the blurring generated in the captured image inconspicuous.
In particular, according to the present embodiment, the angular velocity detection unit 50 for detecting blur at the time of shooting is provided, and the image blur D is simply adjusted by adjusting the image size D (resolution) of the shot image data 210 according to the detection result. It is possible to obtain an inconspicuous image, and it is not necessary to take a plurality of photographed images as in the prior art, so that the storage capacity does not increase and complicated processing such as motion detection is performed. Even without this, it is possible to obtain a photographed image that is not noticeably blurred.

The above-described embodiment is merely an aspect of the present invention, and can be arbitrarily modified and applied within the scope of the present invention.
For example, in the above-described embodiment, in the automatic adjustment shooting mode, the image size D of the captured image data 210 is set according to the shake amount Q among all the image sizes D set in the image size setting data 250. The configuration is determined automatically. However, for example, the user can set the lower limit size (lowest resolution size) or / and the upper limit size (highest resolution size) of the image size D in advance, and within the range of the image size set by the user. The image size D corresponding to the blur amount Q may be determined.
Also, for example, when the image size D corresponding to the blur amount Q is determined in step S5 of the photographing process shown in FIG. 4 above, if the image size D smaller than the image size D can be stored, The candidate of the image size D that can make blurring inconspicuous is presented so that the user can select it, such as “Can be saved at a size smaller than the image size D (resolution). Also good. On the contrary, if the blur amount Q at the time of shooting is very small and the blur is not noticeable even if the image size D is larger than the initial setting value (default setting value), the “image size (resolution) May be sent to the user so that the user can select a larger image size D within a range where blurring is not noticeable.

  In addition, for example, in the above-described embodiment, when the image size D is reduced and the resolution is lowered, a so-called sharpness filter for the image processing unit 24 to clear a contour portion with respect to the captured image data 210. Filter processing for compensating the quality of the captured image, such as processing, may be performed.

In the above-described embodiment, the digital camera 10 is exemplified as one aspect of the photographing apparatus. However, the present invention is not limited to this. For example, the present invention is also applied to a photographing apparatus having a still photographing function and a moving picture photographing function such as a digital video camera. It is possible.
Furthermore, the imaging apparatus to which the present invention is applied can be provided in an electronic apparatus. Examples of such electronic devices include a mobile phone with a camera, a silver salt camera, a PDA with a camera or an externally attached camera, and a notebook computer.

It is a figure which shows the functional structure of the digital camera which concerns on embodiment of this invention. It is a figure for demonstrating a flame | frame. It is a figure which shows image size setting data typically. It is a flowchart of an imaging process.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 ... Digital camera, 20 ... Image pick-up part, 22 ... Image sensor (photographing element), 24 ... Image processing part, 25 ... Compression / expansion part, 30 ... Display part, 50 ... Angular velocity detection part (blur detection means), 60 ... Control unit (control unit), 80... Removable memory, 200 .. RAW data, 210... Photographic image data, 250... Image size setting data, 100.

Claims (8)

An imaging apparatus including an imaging unit that generates image data of a captured image based on an electrical signal output from an imaging element,
A blur amount detecting means for detecting a blur amount at the time of shooting;
An imaging apparatus comprising: control means for setting the resolution of the image data generated by the imaging means based on the blur amount detection value to a resolution at which blurring of the captured image is difficult to be visually recognized.   The imaging apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the control unit lowers the resolution of the image data as the blur amount increases.   The photographing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the control unit changes the resolution by changing an image size of the image data.   The image processing unit according to claim 1, further comprising: an image processing unit that performs a filtering process on the image data to supplement image quality when the resolution of the image data is lowered. Shooting device.   An electronic apparatus comprising the photographing apparatus according to claim 1. An imaging method for an imaging apparatus including an imaging unit that generates image data of a captured image based on an electrical signal output from an imaging element,
A blur amount detection means for detecting the blur amount at the time of shooting is provided,
A photographing method, wherein the resolution of image data of a photographed image is set to a resolution that makes it difficult to visually recognize blurring that occurs in the photographed image based on the amount of blur. An imaging apparatus including an imaging unit that generates image data of a captured image based on an electrical signal output from the imaging element, and a blur amount detection unit that detects a blur amount at the time of shooting,
A program for causing a resolution of image data generated by the photographing unit to function as a unit that makes it difficult to visually recognize a blur of the photographed image based on the detection value of the blur amount. An imaging apparatus including an imaging unit that generates image data of a captured image based on an electrical signal output from the imaging element, and a blur amount detection unit that detects a blur amount at the time of shooting,
A computer-readable recording medium having recorded thereon a program that functions as means for setting the resolution of image data generated by the photographing unit based on the detection value of the blur amount so that the blur of the photographed image is hardly visible.

Images