Patent ID: 7136230

Claim:
An image pickup system comprising an image-formation optical system for forming an image of a subject and an electronic image pickup device located on an image side of said image-formation optical system for obtaining image information on said image, wherein: an angle between the farthest-off-axis chief ray incident on the farthest off-axis site on an image pickup plane of said electronic image pickup device and an axial chief ray incident on the center of said image pickup plane satisfies the following conditions (1) and (2), and said image pickup device satisfies the following condition (3): 36 ⁢ ° < ω w1 < 60 ⁢ ° ( 1 ) - 15 ≦ ω w0 < 10 ° ( 2 ) 3.5 < N < 20 ⁢ ⁢ ( in ⁢ ⁢ million ⁢ s ) ( 3 ) where ω w1 is an angle between a direction of incidence of said axial chief ray and a direction of incidence of said farthest-off-axis chief ray on an entrance plane of said image-formation optical system or, alternatively, at a wide-angle end when said image-formation optical system is a zoom optical system, ω w0 is an angle between a direction of emergence of said axial chief ray and a direction of emergence of said farthest-off-axis chief ray on an exit plane of said image-formation optical system or, alternatively, at a wide-angle end when said image-formation optical system is a zoom optical system with the proviso that a sign for the direction of emergence of light away from an optical axis thereof is negative, and N is an effective number of pixels of said electronic image pickup device (in millions) or a maximum number of recording pixels by signal processing (in millions).