Abstract: In an image pickup apparatus comprising a CCD image pickup device made up of a plurality of pixels constituted by photodiodes which are two-dimensionally arrayed, a vertical register and a horizontal register, and a CPU for driving and controlling the CCD image pickup device, the CPU has a driving function in an all-pixel read mode for reading pixel signals from all the pixels of the CCD image pickup device, a driving function in a thinning (skipping) read mode for reading pixel signals from all the pixels in a thinned-out fashion, and a device shutter function for extracting signal electric charges from each pixel to control an exposure time. In the thinning read mode, the operation of extracting the signal electric charges from each pixel is carried out one or more times for each read period of one frame.

Abstract: In an image pickup apparatus comprising a CCD image pickup device made up of a plurality of photodiodes which are two-dimensionally arrayed, and vertical and horizontal shift registers, and a CPU for driving and controlling the CCD image pickup device, the CPU has a driving function in a mode for performing normal transfer of electric charges for reading in the vertical shift registers of the CCD image pickup device, and a driving function in a mode for performing high-speed sweep transfer to purge out useless electric charges, and sets the pulse width and cycle of vertical transfer pulses for driving the vertical shift register to be substantially the same in the above two modes.