Patent ID: 7413278

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: an ejection head which includes a plurality of nozzles to eject ink droplets; an ejection drive device which drives ejection to eject the ink droplets from the nozzles of the ejection head onto a recording medium; a conveyance device which moves the ejection head and the recording medium relatively to each other by conveying at least one of the ejection head and the recording medium; a light-emitting device which generates determination light which intersects with flight paths of the ink droplets ejected from the nozzles; a light receiving device which receives the determination light having passed through the flight paths and outputs a determination signal corresponding to quantity of the determination light received; a drive control device which controls stagger of ejection timing of a nozzle subject to an ejection determination in accordance with ejection timings of other nozzles by controlling the ejection drive device on the basis of image data during a recording ejection operation for forming an image on the recording medium; and an ejection state judging device which judges ejection state of the ink droplets from the nozzle subject to the ejection determination, on the basis of the determination signal which is obtained from the light receiving device at a determination timing corresponding to the ejection timing of the nozzle subject to the ejection determination.