Patent ID: 6980248

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: first and second image pickup portions for receiving at least a first wavelength component of an object light and a second wavelength component of the object light different from the first wavelength component, respectively; first and second optical systems for projecting the object light onto said first and second image pickup portions, respectively, via different optical paths, said second optical system projecting the object light also onto said first image pickup portion; and guide path forming portions arranged correspondingly with said first and second image pickup portions, respectively, so that each of said guide path forming portions receives the object light including the first and second wavelength components and provides different guide paths thereto, respectively, so as to guide the wavelength component from the optical system corresponding to each of said guide path forming portions among the received first and second wavelength components onto the image pickup portion corresponding to each of said guide path forming portions, wherein, when a virtual object distance D (m) is defined as a function of an image pickup angle θ (°) of said first or second optical systems to be D=1.4/tan (θ/2), an interval between optical axes of said first and second optical systems is set such that change in an interval between an object image of the first wavelength component received by said first image pickup portion and an object image of the second wavelength component received by said second image pickup portion between when an object is at the virtual distance and when the object is at infinity is smaller than a pixel pitch of said image pickup portions multiplied by two.