Patent ID: 7973853

Claim:
An image pickup device provided with an automatic exposure function, comprising: an image pickup unit configured to input image data corresponding to a subject; a face detection unit configured to detect a human face from the image data input from the image pickup unit; a photometric unit configured to measure optical intensity, the photometric unit configured to measure a photometric result of the optical intensity, the photometric result including the optical intensity of all areas including the human face detected by the face detection unit and not including optical intensity from areas not including the human face detected by the face detection unit, and the photometric unit configured to measure a second photometric result of the optical intensity by designating a whole screen as the photometric area; and an exposure control unit configured to calculate the exposure based on the photometric result or the second photometric result of the human face by the photometric unit, and to perform exposure control based on the calculated exposure, the exposure control unit configured to calculate the exposure by giving more weight to the photometric result of the human face compared with the second photometric result of the whole screen, based on the photometric result of the human face and the second photometric result of the whole screen by the photometric unit, the exposure control unit configured to set the exposure based on the photometric result when a ratio of the face occupying the whole screen is large, and the exposure control unit configured to set the exposure based on the second photometric result in all other cases.