Patent 7525594 was granted and assigned to Hoya on April, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A camera has a power switching processor for switching on and off the power supply, a mode-setting processor for setting a selected mode among a plurality of mode, and a plurality of buttons, each corresponding to one mode. When one of the buttons is pushed in a state where the power supply is off, the power switching processor switches the power supply on, and the mode-setting processor sets the selected mode corresponding to the pushed button. When one of the buttons is pushed in a state where the power supply is on, the mode-setting processor changes the selected mode to the mode corresponding to the pushed button. Further, when a specific operation, carried out by pushing at least one of the buttons, which is different from an operation or changing the selected mode, is performed, the power switching processor switches the power supply off.