Patent ID: 7824035

Claim:
An ophthalmic photographing apparatus comprising: a photographing optical system arranged to obtain an image of a given region of an examinee's eye, which comprises: a light source arranged to illuminate the given region; a focusing optical element provided movable in a direction of an optical axis by a driving mechanism; and a photodetector arranged to photo-receive reflection light from the given region; and a control unit arranged to control driving of the driving mechanism, and obtain the image based on a signal outputted from the photodetector, wherein the control unit is arranged to further move the focusing optical element in predetermined steps or continuously to obtain the image at each position, calculate frequency distribution of luminance of each of the images to detect a change characteristic of luminance values having frequencies equal or exceeding a predetermined threshold value in the frequency distribution with respect to the position of the focusing optical element, and detect a focus position of the focusing optical element based on the change characteristics to move the focusing optical element to a position corresponding to the detected focus position.