Adaptive Image Compound Method for Digital Camera Preventing Black Out and White Out Effect

When we take a picture of a scene including a bright area and a dark area with a typical off the shelf camera, we generally get pictures with very dark shadows and bleached out areas. These effects are caused by the low quality of the camera. Ordinary cameras have a narrow dynamic range, so they can’t take quality pictures under poor conditions like into the light. We are developing a camera that can take quality pictures without dark shadows nor bleached out areas under any situations. We change the structure of imaging equipment. Ordinary cameras have one CCD. We increase the number of CCDs to two. Therefore, one is for taking an underexposed picture and the other is for taking an overexposed picture. The underexposed picture provides a high-quality image of the bright part. The overexposed picture provides a high-quality image of the dark part. Firstly, these two pictures are taken at the same time. Secondly, the two pictures are combined taking the high quality areas from both at the most appropriate rate. As a result, we can get a compounded picture without dark shadows nor bleached out areas. In this paper, we prove this method could be effective under our algorithm.