Patent ID: 8169509

Claim:
An image pickup system comprising: a noise estimating unit for estimating the amount of noise contained in digitized signals from an image pickup element in which a plurality of pixels are arranged, for each pixel or for each specified unit area comprising a plurality of pixels; the noise estimating unit comprising: a parameter calculator for calculating parameters on the basis of at least one type of information selected from among a signal value level of the signals, a temperature of the image pickup element, a gain for the signals, and a shutter speed during shooting; and a noise amount calculator for calculating the estimated amount of noise on the basis of the parameters calculated by the parameter calculator; a noise reducing unit for reducing the noise contained in the signals on the basis of the amount of noise estimated by the noise estimating unit; color filters arranged at the front of the image pickup element; and a separating unit for separating the signals output from the image pickup element into signals for each of the color filters.