To provide an image pickup device capable of suppressing power consumption, and also, capable of reducing transfer deterioration by avoiding degradation of a drive frequency and that of substantial resolution, and to provide its driving method.
A digital camera 10 is composed as follows: Either of a normal timing signal and a mixed timing signal is selected with a mode selection control function unit 134. Control signals 108, 80 to each of a timing signal generator (TG) 24 and a driver 18 are outputted from the mode selection control function unit 134 after generating them in conjunction with S2 operation. Gate control signals 52, 54 and the normal timing signal or the mixed timing signal are generated as a horizontal timing signal 74 with the timing signal generator (TG) 24. Signal charges are read out from a gate circuit to a horizontal transfer path. The signal charges are transferred with an eight-phase or two-phase driving signal transmitted from the driver 18 by mixing the signal charges having the same color as the color R/B in the same line except the color G with each other or by the normal transfer. An original signal is restored from the read image signal with an image expansion/compression processing part 112.
Koichi Kushida
Daisuke Suzuki