Patent ID: 6885480

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a photosensitive member; a beam generating means for generating a light beam; a scanner which reflects the light beam generated from the beam generating means toward the photosensitive member and exposes the photosensitive member by scanning the photosensitive member in a main scanning direction with the light beam; an exposure position setting means for setting a position of an exposure area by beam scanning of the scanner as an additional value of a first setting value which is set in a first unit corresponding to the scanning of a pixel clock period and a second setting value which is set in a second unit corresponding to the scanning of the period smaller than the pixel clock period; a first control means for controlling the beam generating means and the scanner so as to expose the area set by the exposure position setting means; a sensor which detects a position in the main scanning direction of the area exposed by the first control means; a second control means for controlling the exposure position setting means so that the exposure position detected by the sensor becomes an objective position, the second control means having a means for increasing the first setting value by one unit and changing the second setting value to a first predetermined value in the case that the additional value of the exposure position setting means is increased to reach a first threshold, and a means for decreasing the first setting value by one unit and changing the second setting value to a second predetermined value in the case that the additional value of the exposure position setting means in which the first setting value has been increased by one unit is decreased to reach a second threshold smaller than the first threshold, wherein the second threshold is separated from the first threshold by a distance corresponding to a value in which the first predetermined value is added to the value of the second unit corresponding to the scanning of the pixel clock period; a means for determining an image forming area on the photosensitive member on the basis of the first setting value and the second setting value of the exposure position setting means and forming an electrostatic latent image corresponding to input image data on the image forming aria using the beam generating means; and a developer which develops the latent image formed on the photosensitive member with developing agent.