Patent ID: 7880774

Claim:
An image recording apparatus comprising: a recording unit that records plural pieces of image information in a storage area together with recording date and time information of the respective pieces of image information; and a control unit that compares the present date and time and the recording date and time information recorded by the recording unit to calculate elapsed time of the respective pieces of image information and deletes some but not all image information with the longer elapsed time at a thinning-out ratio higher than that of the image information with the shorter elapsed time; wherein, in deleting the image information for making free space in the storage area to record next image in the storage area, the control unit deletes the plural pieces of image information recorded by the recording unit in accordance with a first rule of keeping n pieces of image information recorded most recently, a second rule of deleting the m th image information still recorded after image information deleted most recently, and a third rule of deleting the oldest image information neglecting the second rule when the first rule cannot be observed if it is attempted to delete the image information in accordance with the second rule.