Patent ID: 8736750

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: an image pickup unit configured to generate a long-exposure image signal and a short-exposure image signal from incident light and output the long-exposure image signal and the short-exposure image signal as image pickup signals, the long-exposure image signal being generated by a long exposure period and the short-exposure image signal being generated by a short exposure period, the long exposure period being longer than the short exposure period; a signal processing unit configured to generate a combined image signal by combining the long-exposure image signal and the short-exposure image signal based on a predetermined pixel value switching point, the combined image signal having pixel values less than the predetermined pixel value switching point and greater than the predetermined pixel value switching point, and having a dynamic range that is wider than that of at least any one of the long-exposure image signal and the short-exposure image signal; a detection unit configured to obtain a luminance integrated value of the combined image signal and to generate a luminance histogram of the combined image signal; and a control unit configured to perform exposure correction control for the image pickup unit based on the luminance integrated value and the luminance histogram.