Patent ID: 7599616

Claim:
An image shooting apparatus, comprising: a plurality of image pickup means which can be controlled to be individually active or inactive; an image pickup control means for controlling the plurality of image pickup means; and a mode switching control means for performing switching control between a plurality of image shooting modes in accordance with an operating status of the image pickup means where the mode switching control means acquires the operating status of each of the image pickup means from the image pickup control means and determines one of the plurality of image shooting modes to perform switching control between, wherein the mode switching control means switches the image shooting mode of the apparatus into stereoscopic shooting mode based on the operating status, wherein the operating status can be determined to be a stereoscopic shooting mode when among the plurality of image pickup means, at least two image pickup means, arranged a predetermined distance apart from each other, or set a predetermined distance apart from each other by shifting at least one of the plurality of image pickup means, are actuated in such a state that optical axes of the image pickup means lie on the same plane and the optical axes are parallel to each other or intersect each other at a point on that plane forwards with respect to these image pickup means, and wherein among the plurality of image pickup means, at least one image pickup means is variable in distance from the other image pickup means.