Patent ID: 7567268

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a light-beam generating unit that emits a light beam; a light-emission control unit that controls an emission of the light beam of the light-beam generating unit based on an input image signal and performs a setting indicating to the light-beam generating unit whether to perform a forced light emission to detect a scanning timing; a light-beam scanning unit that deflects the light beam emitted from the light-beam generating unit in a main scanning direction and irradiates the deflected light beam on an image carrier; a developing unit that develops a latent image formed by the light beam on the image carrier to produce a visible image; a transferring unit that transfers the visible image to a transfer member; at least two optical sensors arranged at positions to receive the light beam deflected by the light-beam scanning unit, wherein one of the optical sensors is an anomalous-light emission detecting unit that detects an anomalous light emission of the light-beam generating unit when the light-emission control unit sets the light-beam generating unit to prevent the forced light emission of the light beam and does not detect the anomalous light emission when the light-emission control unit sets the light-beam generating unit to allow the forced light emission of the light beam; and a control unit that performs an error processing based on the detected anomalous light emission.