Patent ID: 8011792

Claim:
A lighting unit provided with a light source unit having a plurality of solid state light sources that emits same color component lights, the lighting unit comprising: a light source controlling unit configured to control, in accordance with an image input signal, a light amount of the same color component lights emitted from the plurality of solid state light sources, and an acquiring unit configured to acquire, in accordance with the image input signal, a speckle degree that indicates a degree to which the same color component lights generate a speckle in an image, wherein the light source controlling unit includes: a first control mode that averagely lowers the light amount of the same color component lights emitted from the plurality of solid state light sources, and a second control mode that preferentially lowers a light amount of a same color component light emitted from a solid state light source that has an unfavorable light emission efficiency among the plurality of solid state light sources, and the light source controlling unit changes a control ratio between the first control mode and the second control mode, in accordance with the speckle degree acquired by the acquiring unit.