Patent ID: 8300111

Claim:
a highlight suppression image pickup apparatus: comprising: a camera part provided with a lens optical system, an active filter part which is disposed in a vicinity of a focal plane of the camera part and which can, the active filter part being configured to control an amount of transmitted light, a light sensing means which senses a light transmission amount of the active filter part, a highlight suppression signal producing part which produces a highlight suppression signal which controls the light transmission amount of the active filter part such that an amount of light sensed by the light sensing means becomes a predetermined reference value, wherein the highlight suppression signal which controls the light transmission amount of the active filter part is an image signal, wherein the highlight suppression signal producing part produces the highlight suppression signal on a basis of an image output from at least one color channel of one or two or more color channels output from the camera part, the active filter part optically controls, in accordance with the highlight suppression signal, an amount of light transmitted to an imaging plane of each of the color channels, and the image acquired in the camera part is transmitted through the active filter part, is picked up by an imaging element of each color channel and is output as a highlight-suppressed image in which highlight is optically controlled.