Patent ID: 7038724

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: an image pickup device adapted to pick up an image of an object to output an image signal; an image processing device adapted to process the image signal in accordance with a photographing timing instruction signal output in response to depression of an instruction button, to generate first-resolution image data and second-resolution image data having a resolution which is not higher than that of the first-resolution image data; a storage control device adapted to store, in a memory, the first- and second-resolution image data of image signals of a series of frames which are obtained by consecutively picking up the image of the object; a display control device adapted to display, on a display screen immediately after image pickup of the series of frames, the second-resolution image data thereof stored in said memory; a compression encoding device adapted to compress and encode, at a predetermined compression ratio, the first-resolution image data read out from said memory; and an output device adapted to select compressed and encoded image data corresponding to the second-resolution image data selected by a selection operation from the first-resolution image data of the series of frames, compressed and encoded by said compression encoding device, and output the selected compressed and encoded image data to a non-volatile memory, wherein said compression encoding device and said output device are arranged so that said compression encoding device compresses and encodes the first resolution image data re-read out from said memory, corresponding to the selected second-resolution image data, at a compression ratio different from the predetermined compression ratio and said output device outputs the thus-compressed and encoded first-resolution image data to said non-volatile memory.