A method for driving a solid state imaging device which prevents the generation of electronic shutter noise even when the integration time for exposure of a pixel region fluctuates. The solid state imaging device performs a rolling shutter operation that sequentially selects a reset row and a read row separated from each other in accordance with a row spacing based on integration time in the pixel array. A dummy row is selected when a reset row or a read row is not selected. The method includes selecting a dummy reset row so that the total of the number of the reset rows and the reset dummy rows that are simultaneously selected is constant regardless of the number of simultaneously selected reset rows.