Abstract: An electronic still camera has a stroboscope, a video signal circuit composed of an image pickup element or a charge coupled device, a video signal processing section, an A/D converting section, a timing generator and a frame memory, a trigger timing generator, and a control circuit for controlling operations of the stroboscope, the video signal circuit and the trigger timing generator. A stroboscopic control method used in the electronic still camera has the steps of emitting light from the stroboscope in synchronization with video signals of first and second fields so as to provide an exposure with respect to each of the first and second fields of a frame picture image; and controlling exposure amounts for the first and second fields such that these exposure amounts are equal to each other.

Abstract: At least a portion of one line of an output signal from an image pickup device is stored in a delay line, and maximum and minimum values of the output signal are detected. Then, a coefficient is computed for shifting the minimum value to a least significant bit in an A/D converter and the maximum value to a most significant bit in the A/D converter. The stored signal is read out of the delay line, amplified by the coefficient, and converted to a digital signal representative of automatic-focusing information.