Patent US 4,791,306

According to a method and apparatus for converting an image into electrical signals, a single image is exposed onto a plurality of solid-state image pickup devices a plurality of times each, and charges distributed in correspondence with images induced by the respective exposure cycles are shifted within the respective solid-state image pickup devices and are added to each other. In addition, the output signals generated by the solid-state image pickup devices and representing the identical pixels are subtracted from each other.