Patent ID: 7865095

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a plurality of image forming units which form toner images; an image carrier which moves along said plurality of image forming units and onto which the toner images formed by said image forming units are transferred; an image information detection unit comprising a light emitting portion which irradiates said image carrier and the toner images transferred onto said image carrier with light and a light receiving portion which receives reflected light resulting from the light irradiated by the light emitting portion being reflected from said image carrier and the toner images, said image information detection unit detecting image information of the toner images; a distance detection unit which detects distance information regarding the distance between the light receiving portion of said image information detection unit and the surface of said image carrier facing said image information detection unit; and a control unit which controls the density of toner images formed by said image forming units based on the image information detected by said image information detection unit and the distance information detected by said distance detection unit.