Patent ID: 8346073

Claim:
An image taking apparatus which records an image captured by an image pickup device in a recording medium in response to an image recording instruction, the image taking apparatus comprising: a zooming device; a zooming instruction device which instructs zooming by the zooming device in the telephoto direction or the wide direction; a mode setting device which stets a group photographing mode; a template recording device which is recorded with a plurality of group photographing templates with different distributions of the faces of persons; a selection device which selects a template for use in the group photographing mode; a detection device which detects positions and sizes of faces of persons captured by the image pickup device in the group photographing mode; a face zooming instruction device which instructs zooming of the faces of the persons by the zooming device in the group photographing mode; and a control device which controls the zooming device in response to an instruction from the zooming instruction device and which controls the zooming device such that a distribution of the faces of the persons captured by the image pickup device approaches the distribution of the faces of the person in the template selected by the selection device based on the detection result of the detection device when zooming to the faces of the persons is instructed by the face zooming instruction device in group photographing mode.