Patent ID: 8107000

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: a plurality of lens portions, each having at least one lens; a plurality of image pickup regions which are provided to correspond to said plurality of lens portions, respectively, and each of which has a light receiving surface substantially perpendicular to a direction of an optical axis of a corresponding lens portion; an image pickup signal input portion which receives image pickup signals generated by the image pickup regions; a transfer range determining portion which determines a transfer range of the image pickup signals transferred from the image pickup regions to said image pickup signal input portion; an image pickup region driving portion which drives the image pickup regions such that the image pickup signals corresponding to the transfer range determined by said transfer range determining portion are transferred to said image pickup signal input portion; and a parallax calculating portion which calculates a parallax based on the image pickup signals transferred said image pickup signal input portion, wherein: said transfer range determining portion is configured to be able to switch between a first operating mode in which the image pickup signals generated by at least two image pickup regions of said plurality of image pickup regions are determined as the transfer range and a second operating mode in which the image pickup signals different from those of the first operating mode are determined as the transfer range, and said transfer range determining portion is configured to be able to switch between the first operating mode in which the image pickup signals generated by all of the image pickup regions are determined as the transfer range and the second operating mode in which the image pickup signals generated by a substantially half of the image pickup regions are determined as the transfer range.