Patent application number | Description | Published |
20110042874 | OBJECT PROCESSING APPARATUS, EXPOSURE APPARATUS AND EXPOSURE METHOD, AND DEVICE MANUFACTURING METHOD - A plurality of air levitation units that jet air to the lower surface of a substrate are placed below the substrate, and the substrate is supported in a noncontact manner so as to be substantially horizontal. Further, a portion subject to exposure of the substrate is held by a fixed-point stage from below in a noncontact manner, and the surface position of the portion subject to exposure is adjusted in a pinpoint manner. Accordingly, exposure can be performed on the substrate with high precision, and a configuration of a substrate stage device can be simplified. | 02-24-2011 |
20110043784 | OBJECT MOVING APPARATUS, OBJECT PROCESSING APPARATUS, EXPOSURE APPARATUS, OBJECT INSPECTING APPARATUS AND DEVICE MANUFACTURING METHOD - A substrate is held by adsorption by a substrate holding frame that is formed into a frame shape and is lightweight, and the substrate holding frame is driven along a horizontal plane by a drive unit that includes a linear motor. Below the substrate holding frame, a plurality of air levitation units are placed that support by levitation the substrate in a noncontact manner such that the substrate is substantially horizontal, by jetting air to the lower surface of the substrate. Since the plurality of air levitation units cover a movement range of the substrate holding frame, the drive unit can guide the substrate holding frame (substrate) along the horizontal plane at high speed and with high precision. | 02-24-2011 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090059062 | IMAGING DEVICE AND AUTOFOCUSING METHOD - In a digital video camera according to one aspect of the invention, a black level of a video signal is specified during an initialization process. An autofocusing process obtains an AF evaluation value and a brightness evaluation value at each current position of a compensator lens and updates a maximum AF evaluation value and a corresponding position of the compensator lens based on the obtained data. The autofocusing process also detects an AGC gain, computes an offset value of the AF evaluation value from the detected AGC gain, the obtained brightness evaluation value, and the specified black level, and calculates a threshold value from the computed offset value and the updated maximum AF evaluation value. When the obtained AF evaluation value is less than the calculated threshold value, the lens position corresponding to the maximum AF evaluation value is specified as the focus position. When the obtained AF evaluation value is not less than the calculated threshold value, on the other hand, this series of processing is repeated with a position shift of the compensator lens by a preset number of steps. This arrangement ensures efficient and precise hill-climbing autofocus control in view of the potential influence of high frequency noise in the digital video camera or another electronic camera. | 03-05-2009 |
20090244327 | CAMERA SYSTEM - A camera system includes a camera, a shooting field shifting mechanism, a shift amount acquiring unit, and a masking processor that masks a masking target within a captured image flame. The masking processor includes first and second position computing units, and mask area establishing unit. The first and second position computing units compute, based on the shift settings of the shooting field shifting mechanism, first and second relative positions of the masking target relative to the shooting field. The mask area establishing unit establishes a mask area to mask the masking target on the captured image flame, based on the first and second relative positions. | 10-01-2009 |
20100289940 | IMAGING DEVICE AND FOCUSING METHOD - A hill-climbing scheme of an automatic focusing process performed in a digital video camera obtains a moving speed Vj and an AGC gain Gj of a compensator lens every time an AF evaluation value AFj is detected corresponding to the position of the compensator lens. Adjustment factors α and β are computed with the moving speed Vj and the AGC gain Gj as parameters, where 0<α<1 and 0<β<1. The adjustment factor α is set to increase with an increase of the moving speed Vj, while the adjustment factor β is set to increase with a decrease of the AGC gain Gj. The automatic focusing process determines an in-focus position, based on the result of comparison between each detected AF evaluation value AFj and a threshold value TH. The threshold value TH is computed by multiplying a maximum value AFmax of the AF evaluation value AFj detected in the course of the hill-climbing scheme by the computed adjustment factors α and β. This arrangement attains the effective focusing technique of adequately determining the in-focus position according to various imaging conditions. | 11-18-2010 |
20130022342 | IMAGING DEVICE AND CONTROL METHOD THEREOF - An imaging device moves a zoom lens, so as to change the magnification of an image of a subject, and obtains a near limit position of a focusing lens to the subject at a zoom lens position. When a target position of the focusing lens, which is required to keep the image in focus after the zoom lens is moved, is located on a near side, i.e., on an imaging plane side, of a threshold position determined based on the obtained near limit position, focus control is performed to move the focusing lens and thereby focus. When the target position of the focusing lens is not located on the near side but is located on a subject side of the threshold position, on the other hand, focus control is performed to move the zoom lens to a wider position and subsequently move the focusing lens to focus the image. | 01-24-2013 |