Patent ID: 7825977

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: a control unit that changeably sets one out of a plurality of frame rates; an image sensor that picks up an image of a region including a valid image pickup region at a frame rate set by the control unit; an output unit that reads out an image pickup signal from the image sensor; a timing setting unit that sets a vertical synchronization cycle in accordance with the frame rate set by the control unit and adds an image pickup signal that does not include the valid image pickup region in accordance with the set vertical synchronization cycle while keeping a horizontal synchronization cycle of each image pickup signal outputted by the output unit constant; and a time axis correcting unit that corrects a time axis of an image pickup signal including the valid image pickup region, outputted from the output unit, correspondingly to the set frame rate, and deletes the image pickup signal that does not include the valid image pickup region, added by the timing setting unit.