US Patent 7391444 Image pickup apparatus capable of selecting output according to time measured by timer

In an image pickup apparatus, timer 2 starts a time measuring operation when a shutter button is pressed. When a time T1 is measured by timer 2, the image from CCD 1 is output as a background image to a background image buffer 4. In addition, when a time (T1+T2) is measured by timer 2, the image from CCD 1 is output as a normal image to a region extracting portion 5 and image compressing portion 6. The background image mainly refers to an image only including a background. The normal image mainly refers to an image with an object of interest arranged in front of the background.