Patent ID: 7081999

Claim:
An image display apparatus comprising: reflective display means; illumination means for illuminating the display means; an illumination optical system for guiding light from the illumination means to the display means; a display optical system for guiding light from the display means to an observation position; a first optical member used in common by said illumination optical system and said display optical system and having an optical surface (A) functioning as a reflecting surface in association with said illumination optical system and as a transmission surface in association with said display optical system; and a second optical member; wherein light from said illumination means is reflected by said optical surface (A) and is guided to said display means; wherein light from said display means is transmitted through said optical surface (A) and then is transmitted through said second optical member to be guided to the observation position, wherein, when a reference ray is defined as a ray which is illumination light from said illumination means that is reflected at the center of said display means and emerges therefrom and is incident on the center of a pupil, and a plane that includes incident light and exit light of the reference ray in each surface is defined as a local meridional section in each surface, the following condition is satisfied, 0.1<local.fyA/local.fy<1.0, where local.fy is a focal length of said display optical system in the local meridional section and local.fyA is a focal length of said optical surface (A), and wherein said display optical system includes a plurality of reflecting surfaces in said second optical member.