Patent ID: 8106994

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: an image pickup lens section; an image pickup device obtaining image pickup data on the basis of light detected; a microlens array section arranged on a focal plane of the image pickup lens section between the image pickup lens section and the image pickup device, and including a plurality of microlenses, each of the microlenses being provided corresponding to a plurality of image pickup pixels of the image pickup device; and a light-condensing section configured of a plurality of light-condensing elements, each of the light-condensing elements condensing light entering into each of the image pickup pixels of the image pickup device, wherein on the image pickup device, in a pixel region corresponding to each microlens, the pitch between the light-condensing elements in the light-condensing section is smaller than the pixel size in a predetermined direction in the image pickup pixel, and in a boundary region between pixel regions corresponding to microlenses, respectively, the pitch between the light-condensing elements is larger than the pixel size in the predetermined direction in the image pickup pixel, wherein the image pickup lens section includes an aperture stop, and satisfies the following formula (1), p =( m×s )×{ L /( L+f )} (1) where p is a pitch between the microlenses, s is a pixel size in the predetermined direction, m is the number (an integer) of the image pickup pixels allocated to each of the microlenses in the predetermined direction, L is a distance between the aperture stop and the microlens array section, and f is a focal length of each of the microlenses.