Patent ID: 7314269

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a liquid chamber into which ink is filled; an ejection port through which the ink is ejected from the liquid chamber; a mist generation device which generates a mist from a surface of the ink inside the ejection port by applying vibration energy to the ink in the liquid chamber; an electric field generation device which generates an electric field causing the mist ejected from the ejection port to move to a recording medium; and a setting device which sets at least one of drive conditions of the mist generation device and a recording resolution in such a manner that a relationship Pt≧d 2 is satisfied, where d 2 is an overlap-permissible diameter which is a minimum distance between centers of two mist dots formed by the mist on the recording medium that allows shapes of the two mist dots to be fixed as a prescribed shape when the two mist dots are deposited on the recording medium substantially simultaneously under substantially same ejection conditions so as to overlap partially with each other, and Pt is a pitch between the centers of the two mist dots defined by the recording resolution.