Patent ID: 7199823

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus applied to a microscope, comprising: an image pickup part configured to pick up an observed image obtained by the microscope; an amplifier section configured to amplify an output from said image pickup part; a display section configured to display an image which is amplified by said amplifier section and processed by an image processing; a recording section configured to record the image amplified by said amplifier section and processed by the image processing; a photometry part configured to acquire a photometry value in accordance with a brightness of the observed image; an exposure calculation part configured to calculate a reference exposure time based on the photometry value acquired by said photometry part; and an exposure control part configured to control exposure in accordance with the reference exposure time, by controlling an actual exposure time of the image pickup part and a gain of the amplifier section; wherein said exposure control part comprises: a first exposure control part configured to control the exposure in a first mode, when the image is displayed by said display section, wherein when the reference exposure time is longer than a limit exposure time said first exposure control part sets the limit exposure time to said image pickup part as the actual exposure time, and sets the gain of said amplifier section, and wherein the gain is obtained by multiplying a ratio of the reference exposure time to the limit exposure time by a standard gain of said amplifier section; and a second exposure control part configured to control the exposure in a second mode, when the image is recorded in said recording section, wherein said second exposure control part sets the reference exposure time to said image pickup part as the actual exposure time, and sets the standard gain to said amplifier section.