Patent attributes
In a solid-state image pickup apparatus, a preliminary pickup circuit performs, during preliminary pickup, divided photometry on a photometry signal outputted from the primary cells of photo-sensors, determines an exposure condition in which photometry data in all divided blocks do not exceed the saturation maximum value of the primary cells, and calculates the individual photometry data tints under the above exposure condition. During actual pickup, a shading corrector included in an image processing circuit divides subsidiary image data in the same manner as during the divided photometry, calculates shading correction gains in accordance with the photometry data tints and those of the subsidiary image data, and interpolates the shading correction gains in accordance with the pixel for thereby executing color shading correction on the subsidiary image data.