Patent ID: 7295382

Claim:
An image pickup device comprising: a collapsible lens barrel which is held in a main body of the image pickup device in a non-picture-taking mode, said lens barrel including a plurality of optical lenses; a shutter unit which is arranged behind a rearmost one of the plurality of optical lenses of the lens barrel, said shutter unit including a unit base member having an opening and a plurality of shutter blades that are attached to the unit base member and that are opened and closed by electromagnetic driving; a first shutter control unit which controls the shutter blades to be in a first state when the lens barrel is collapsed such that the shutter blades are opened and at least part of at least one of the optical lenses is inserted in the opening of the unit base member; and a second shutter control unit which, when the lens barrel is projected from the main body of the image pickup device, controls the shutter blades to be on standby in a second state such that the shutter blades are moved to be partially closed so as to be opened by a smaller amount than in the first state, and then controls the shutter blades to further close from the second state in reply to an instruction for starting a picture taking operation.