Electronic camera

Details Electronic camera Electronic camera

1998-09-08

2004-04-13

Christensen, Andrew (Department: 2615)

Television

Camera, system and detail

With electronic viewfinder or display monitor

C348S333010

Reexamination Certificate

active

06721011

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an electronic camera and, more particularly, to an electronic camera for reconstructing and displaying a plurality of pickup images.
In recent years, electronic cameras for electrically recording an optical image of a subject by converting the image into an electrical signal using the photoelectric conversion action of a semiconductor represented by silicon have practically been used instead of so-called silver salt cameras for recording an image on a film using the chemical photosensitive action of silver halide. Of such electronic cameras, so-called digital cameras for digitally recording an electrical signal are becoming a major stream.
To meet the user's demand for higher-quality images along with development of the electronic camera market, a CCD having a larger number of pixels is used as a photoelectric conversion element. However, an increase in the number of CCD pixels increases image data, and thus the electronic camera requires a large-capacity recording medium to record an image or a long time to transfer an image. To solve this problem, the data amount is generally compressed/decompressed by encoding/decoding image data.
An image is encoded/decoded using an arithmetic device such as a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) in order to increase the speed as much as possible. Nevertheless, processing image data made of pixel data of several hundred thousand or more pixels inevitably spends a certain time.
For this reason, even if the user instructs reconstruction of the next frame while a given frame of a recorded image is reconstructed, the next frame is only displayed after a long time. The user may misunderstand that the user failed to depress the button and repeatedly instruct reconstruction of the next frame, or may misunderstand that an error occurs in the electronic camera and turn off the power supply.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic camera capable of allowing the user to reliably recognize operation.
According to the present invention, there is provided an electronic camera comprising an image sensing unit for sensing an image, and generating and processing image data, an image-pickup/reconstruction unit for recording the image data from the image sensing unit on a recording medium and reconstructing a plurality of images from the recording medium, a display unit for displaying the plurality of reconstructed images, and a display control unit which has a frame number superimposition function of superimposing a defined frame number on each image in displaying an image on the display unit, and displays an image together with a frame number on the display unit, wherein the display control unit superimposes, on the first image, both a first frame number related to a first image as an image being displayed and a second frame number related to a second image as an image being processed so as to display the second image on the basis of a display command having already been issued, and displays the first image superimposed with the first and second frame numbers on the display unit.
According to the present invention, there is provided an electronic camera wherein the display control unit superimposes, on the first image, an auxiliary identification mark for facilitating identification of a relationship between the first frame number and the second frame number.
According to the electronic camera of the present invention, the display displays a plurality of images picked-up and reconstructed, and the frame number superimposition unit superimposes a frame number defined for each image on the image and displays the image with the corresponding frame number in displaying the image on the display. Further, the frame number superimposition unit superimposes, on the first image, both the first frame number as a frame number related to the first image as an image being displayed and the second frame number as a frame number related to the second image as an image being processed so as to display the second image on the basis of a display command having already been issued, and displays the first image superimposed with the first and second frame numbers.
According to the electronic camera of the present invention, the frame number superimposition unit further superimposes, on the first image, an auxiliary identification mark for facilitating identification of the relationship between the first frame number and the second frame number and displays the first image with the auxiliary identification mark.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.


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