Patent ID: 8059189

Claim:
An image capturing apparatus which performs photographing multiple times with an illumination light of an illumination unit and composes these multiple images to obtain a composite image of a correct exposure, the apparatus comprising: an image capturing unit adapted to capture an optical image of an object as an electrical signal; an image composition unit adapted to compose multiple images obtained by multiple times of photographing by the image capturing unit; and an illumination light amount setting unit adapted to set a light amount of the illumination unit; wherein: all of the multiple images are the images shot by performing illumination with the illumination unit, the illumination light amount setting unit sets a light amount for each of the multiple images performed with the illumination of the illumination unit to be a light amount obtained by dividing a light amount for the correct exposure based on a number of images taken of an image to be composed, and the illumination unit continues the emission until the predetermined number of times of photographing is finished.