DIMMING DEVICE AND ITS DRIVING METHOD, AND IMAGE PICKUP DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To improve the performance, picture quality, and reliability of a dimming device and an image pickup device more by speedily and accurately judging ambient temperature and smoothly starting alignment variation of liquid crystal or its relaxation according to the ambient temperature even when a liquid crystal element for dimming is driven for halftones in low-temperature environment. SOLUTION: The dimming device 23 has a liquid crystal element (GH cell) 12. The liquid crystal element 12 is driven and controlled by a control part 64 including a temperature decision part 65 which detects the light transmissivity when the liquid crystal element 12 is in a transparent and/or in a shading state during actual use and decides the ambient temperature of the liquid crystal element 12 according to the detected value.