Patent ID: 8310652

Claim:
An image taking system, comprising: a lens apparatus; an image pickup apparatus; an operation angle detection unit for detecting an operation angle of the lens apparatus; a direction storage unit for storing a direction of an object with respect to the operation angle of the lens apparatus; an angle-of-field calculation unit for calculating an image taking angle of field based on a zoom position and a focus position of the lens apparatus; a ranging area setting unit for calculating a position of at least one object in an image taking screen based on the operation angle detected by the operation angle detection unit, the direction stored in the direction storage unit, and the image taking angle of field calculated by the angle-of-field calculation unit, to thereby set a ranging area at the position of the at least one object; an object distance calculation unit for calculating an object distance in the ranging area; and an output image generation unit for generating an output image containing a taken image generated by the image pickup apparatus and information based on the object distance corresponding to the ranging area.