Patent ID: 7433615

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a charger unit configured to charge a surface of an image bearing member; a light exposure unit configured to form an electrostatic latent image on the surface of said image bearing member according to a light exposure condition; a developer unit configured to develop said electrostatic latent image into a toner image; a detection unit configured to detect a total number of rotations of said image bearing member; an image density control unit configured to form at least one reference toner pattern on the image bearing member, and detect an image density of said at least one reference toner pattern; a target potential decision table configured to store a target developing bias for bringing an image density of a subsequent toner pattern to a target image density and to store a target uniform charging potential that corresponds to the target developing bias; and a control unit configured to compute an adjustment of the at least one light exposure condition for said light exposure unit based on a thickness of a film of said image bearing member calculated from the total number of rotations of said image bearing member and the target uniform charging potential of said image bearing member, and the control unit is configured to control said light exposure unit to form a subsequent electrostatic latent image according to the adjusted at least one light exposure condition.