Patent ID: 8121473

Claim:
An imaging apparatus comprising: a photometry unit dividing a subject into a plurality of regions and performing a photometry; a first calculating unit calculating a first exposure control value based on a photometry result of the photometry unit; a comparing unit comparing the first exposure control value with a maximum value of photometry values in the plurality of regions; an estimating unit estimating a saturation amount of a highlight part of an image depending on a comparison result by the comparing unit; a second calculating unit correcting the first exposure control value using the saturation amount being estimated by the estimating unit to calculate a second exposure control value in which an exposure control result of when using the second exposure control value is under than that of when using the first exposure control value; an image pickup unit picking up an image of the subject according to the second exposure control value and generating an image data; a third calculating unit calculating a lightness improvement amount for a correction of dark area gradation of the image data depending on the comparison result by the comparing unit; a low-pass filter processing unit performing processing by a low-pass filter on the image data generated in the image pickup unit to generate a low-pass image; a correcting unit performing a correction to improve a lightness of dark area gradation of the image data generated in the image pickup unit according to the lightness improvement amount calculated by the third calculating unit and the low-pass image; and a recording unit recording the image data after correction by the correcting unit.