JPH02192024A - Electrophotographic machine using optical memory card - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To increase the number of image recording sheets and to improve recording reliability by using an optical memory card as a recording medium. CONSTITUTION:The electronic camera having an optical head for writing image information in accordance with electrical signals contains a feed mechanism which makes relative linear track scanning of the optical memory card 3 loaded with the optical head and a feed mechanism which makes relative track pitch feed. Namely, the optical head is relatively scanned with respect to the straight tracks 3a of the optical memory card 3 by the operation of the optical head feed mechanism and the next straight tracks 3a are scanned at the end of the straight track scanning. The photographed images are, therefore, recorded on the optical memory card by the track scanning. The number of the image recording sheets is increased in this way and the reliability of holding the record is high; in addition, handling is facilitated.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to an electrophotographic machine, and particularly to an electrophotographic machine that can use an optical memory card as a recording medium.

[Conventional technology]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventional electrophotographic machines focus an object image on an imaging device such as a CCD through a lens system, convert it into an electrical signal, and record this on a floppy disk as a magnetic recording medium. Compared to regular cameras that use photosensitive film, this type of electronic camera is easier to use because it is easier to attach and detach the recording medium, and there is no need for development, fixing, and printing after taking pictures. It has the advantage of

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

However, the electrophotographic machine using the above-mentioned floppy magnetic disk has the following problems.

■The commonly used floppy magnetic disk is a disk-shaped magnetic recording medium with a nominal diameter of 2 inches, and the dimensions are 54 x 60 x 3.
．． It is stored in a cartridge with a length, width, and thickness of 6 (mm), and the recording capacity per cartridge is approximately 1 MB.
Normally, it is possible to record several dozen color images, but the number of recordable images is not much different from that of photosensitive film, and the recording capacity per volume is still low.

(2) Furthermore, there is a drawback that recordings are erased due to external magnetism, and there is concern about the reliability of the recording medium itself. Furthermore, the magnetic head and the like are likely to be damaged by mechanical shock during carrying.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an electrophotographic machine that can increase the number of recorded images, has high recording reliability, and is less susceptible to mechanical shock by using an optical memory card as a recording medium. There is a particular thing.

[Means to solve the problem]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the measures taken by the present invention include an imaging optical system that forms an object image, an imaging means that converts the image into an electrical signal as image information, and a camera body. In an electrophotographic apparatus including an optical head that writes image information to a removable optical memory card based on the electrical signal, a first optical head that scans a linear track relatively to the optical memory card loaded with the optical head. It has a built-in feeding mechanism and a second feeding mechanism for relative track pitch feeding.

[Effect]

According to this means, when an optical memory card is loaded into the camera body and a photograph is taken, image information is sent to the optical head, but the optical head is moved relative to the linear track of the optical memory card by the operation of the first feeding mechanism. At the same time as the optical memory card is scanned, the optical memory card is moved by the track pitch relative to the optical memory card by the operation of the second feeding mechanism in order to scan the next linear track at the end of the linear track scanning or in the middle of the linear track scanning.

The photographed image is recorded on the optical memory card by this track scanning.

〔Example〕

Next, one embodiment of the present invention will be described based on the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing the appearance of an embodiment of an electrophotographic machine using an optical memory card according to the present invention.

The external appearance of the electrophotographic camera of the embodiment is similar to a normal still camera, and is roughly composed of a camera body 1 and a lens barrel 2 attached to the camera body 1. The camera body 1 has a shutter button 1
a% and a finder 1b, and a card insertion slot IC is provided on the side surface of the optical memory card 3 into which the optical memory card 3 can be inserted and inserted into an internal optical recording device (described later).

On the other hand, the optical memory card 3 has an external appearance as shown in FIG.
It has a length, width, and thickness of 4 x 85 x 8 (mm), and is almost the same shape as a magnetic card. Its structure is a laminated structure in which a recording layer and a protective layer are sequentially formed on a plastic substrate, and the recording layer may be a silver salt photographic material sensitive to laser light, a metal thin film that can be perforated by laser light, or a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. These are so-called magneto-optical recording media that use a highly magnetic thin film. This method of recording onto the optical memory card 3 is to record information into recording pits by laser beam irradiation along a plurality of straight tracks 3a. The track pitch (track spacing) is about 2 to 20 μm, and 1 to 1 track per track.
It has a recording capacity of 5 bytes, and one optical memory card has a storage capacity of 3 bytes.
It is possible to record information of up to 135 Mbytes.

FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram showing the overall configuration of this embodiment. 10 is a normal imaging device of a camera, and a lens barrel 2
an imaging optical system 12 including a shutter button 1a, a focal plane shutter, etc., and a shutter circuit 14 including a shutter button 1a, a focal plane shutter, etc.
It is generally composed of an automatic focus/automatic aperture mechanism 16. Reference numeral 20 denotes an imaging device, which is composed of a CCD element 22 that converts the image formed on the photocathode into an electrical signal as image information, and a quantization circuit 24 that converts the electrical signal into a digital signal according to the intensity of each pixel. ing. If the quantization is 64 gradations or 128 gradations, considerably high-quality image reproduction is possible. 30 is an optical recording drive device (described later) that records the image information on the loaded optical memory card 3.

Although image reproduction is normally performed using a separate reproducing device for the optical memory card, it is also possible to reproduce the reproduced image signal obtained from the optical recording drive device 30 via a cable on a CRT or the like.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing the optical arrangement of the optical recording drive device 30 in this embodiment. 31 is a semiconductor laser, Ll
3 is a collimator lens that converts the laser beam emitted from the semiconductor laser into a parallel beam, 32 is a transmission type diffraction grating that selects a predetermined spectrum of light from the parallel beam, and 33 is a double optical path comprising a straight transmission area 33a and a 45° reflection surface 33b. A deflection prism L2 having the same length is a straight transmission area 33a of the deflection prism 33 with respect to the optical memory card 3 which is an optical recording medium.
This is a pickup lens that condenses the parallel light beam that has passed through the lens using one half of the lens, and spreads the reflected light using another half of the lens to produce parallel reflected light.

34 is a beam splitter that splits the reflected light which has been deflected by 90° on the reflecting surface 33b of the deflection prism 33 into two parts.

L3 is a condenser lens that condenses the straight light from the beam splitter 34, and L4 is a condenser lens that condenses the reflected light from the beam splitter 34. 35 is an automatic focusing/automatic tracking sensor that corrects the vertical movement of the optical memory card 3 based on the amount of horizontal shift of the focus of the straight light. Reference numeral 36 denotes a reproduction signal detection sensor that reads recorded information based on an increase or decrease in the amount of reflected light obtained by relative scanning of the laser beam to the optical memory card 3. During the writing period to the optical memory card 3 and the reading period from the optical memory card 3, relative x-y movement between the laser optical system 37 and the optical memory card 3 is performed.

FIG. 5 is a perspective view showing the card vertical and horizontal transport mechanism of the optical recording drive device 30 in this embodiment.

The components of the card vertical and horizontal feeding mechanism 40 are built into the camera body 1. Reference numeral 41 denotes an optical head that houses the laser optical system 37 including the semiconductor laser 31. The optical head 41 is held at both ends by a pitch guide bar 43 supported by a support plate 42 and a threaded bar 44, and is in a suspended state. The threaded bar 44 is driven by a head feed motor 45 so as to be rotatable in forward and reverse directions. A toothed belt 46 is wound around gears 47a and 47b at both ends, and is driven by the rotation of a driving gear 47H that is pivotally attached to the rotating shaft of a card feed motor 48.

A horizontal guide bar 48a is installed along the surface side of the toothed belt 46. 49 is a card holder located below the optical head 41, which includes a base plate 49a and a plate spring presser 49b that presses the inserted optical memory card 3 toward the base plate 49a side.
and a sliding block 49c which is fixed to a part of the surface side of the toothed belt 46 and is slidable with respect to the horizontal guide bar 48a. 50 is a guide rail that supports the side end of the card holder 49.

When the optical memory card 3 is inserted into the card insertion slot IC of the camera body 1, the card holder 49 receives it. When the shutter button 1a is pressed, the automatic focus/automatic aperture mechanism operates in conjunction with the operation of the shutter circuit 14, and the imaging optical system 1
2 forms the object image captured by the lens barrel 2 on the photocathode of the CCD element 22. This image formation is converted into an image signal by the CCD element 22, which is digitized by the quantum circuit 24 and supplied to the optical recording drive device 30. The optical recording drive device 30 is triggered by a synchronization signal from the shutter circuit 14 and starts scanning a track corresponding to the information capacity of one image. That is, the toothed belt 4 is driven by the card feed motor 48.
6 rotates, the card holder 49 moves laterally, and the straight track 3 of the optical memory card 3 on the card holder 49 is rotated.
A laser beam is irradiated from the optical head 41 to a. Further, vertical feeding (pitch feeding) is performed by rotation of a threaded bar driven by a head feeding motor 45. Track scanning is a reciprocating movement between adjacent tracks, and the optical head 41 is usually pitch-fed at the end of the track. ■In the case of image l-track scanning, pitch feeds are not interpolated, so there is no need for buffer memory, switching control circuits, etc., and there is an advantage of short recording times. However, if the amount of information in one image is large, pitch feeds may be interrupted. need to be inserted. In this embodiment, since the optical memory card 3 with a recording capacity of 1 to 5 bytes per track is used, it is possible to optically record multiple images on one track, and pitch feeding is performed after the recording of the final image is completed. , and then the next image is recorded on the adjacent track.

In this way, since image information can be recorded on the optical memory card 3 with a high recording capacity, it is possible to record more than 100 times the amount of information compared to a conventional 2-inch floppy magnetic disk. Conversely, high resolution and high contrast of images can be obtained. Furthermore, there is no problem of magnetic loss, highly reliable recording retention is achieved, and compared to magnetic recording, it is resistant to mechanical shock and is easy to handle.

As a modification of this embodiment, it is also possible to eliminate the optical shutter and optical finder and instead constantly monitor images with a viewfinder using a CRT or liquid crystal display element, and also monitor playback of recorded images. be able to. However, in this case, a circuit is required to convert the output of the CCD element into a composite signal.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, an electrophotographic camera using an optical memory card according to the present invention performs linear track scanning relative to the optical memory card in order to optically record photographed images on a plurality of straight tracks of the optical memory card. Since it incorporates the second feeding mechanism that feeds the track pitch relative to the first feeding mechanism, the following effects are achieved.

(2) It becomes possible to record images of photographs taken on a rectangular optical memory card, and the number of images that can be recorded can be greatly increased compared to those using conventional floppy disks as recording media. Conversely, it is also possible to improve the quality of one image recording.

■Compared to magnetic recording, record retention is more reliable;
Easy to handle, etc.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing the appearance of an embodiment of an electrophotographic machine using an optical memory card according to this embodiment. FIG. 2 is a plan view showing the appearance of the optical memory card used in the same embodiment. FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram showing the overall configuration of the embodiment. FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing the optical arrangement of the optical recording drive device in the same embodiment. FIG. 5 is a perspective view showing the card vertical and horizontal transport mechanism of the optical recording drive device in the same embodiment. 1 Camera body, 1a Shirt button, 1b Finder, 2 Lens barrel, 3 Optical memory card, 3a Straight track, 10 Imaging device, 12 Imaging optical system, 14
Shutter circuit, 16 automatic focus/automatic aperture mechanism,
20 imaging device, 22 CCD element, 24 quantization circuit, 30 optical recording drive device, 31 semiconductor laser, 32 transmission type diffraction grating, 33 deflection prism, 3
4 beam splitter, 35 auto focus/auto tracking sensor, 36 reproduction signal detection sensor, Ll collimation lens, L2 pickup lens, L3゜L
, condenser lens, 37 laser optical system, 40
Card vertical and horizontal feeding mechanism, 41 Optical head, 42 Support plate, 43 Pitch guide bar, 44 Screw bar, 4
5 Head feed motor, 46 ・Toothed bell), 47a, 4
7b gear, 48 card feed motor, 48a horizontal guide bar, 49 card holder, 49a base plate, 49
b Leaf spring holder, 49- sliding block, 5o guide rail. 3-optical memory card Figure 2

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1) An imaging optical system that forms an object image, an imaging means that converts the image into an electrical signal as image information, and an optical memory card that is removably attached to the camera body based on the electrical signal. a first feeding mechanism that includes an optical head for writing image information, and that relatively performs linear track scanning on the optical memory card loaded with the optical head; and a second feeding mechanism that relatively performs track pitch feeding with respect to the optical memory card loaded with the optical head. An electrophotographic device using an optical memory card, characterized in that it has a built-in optical memory card.