Patent ID: 8144235

Claim:
An image pickup device, comprising: a lens unit which has a lens with an optical zoom function; a solid state image sensor which performs photoelectric conversion of an incident light from the lens to electric signals; an image processing unit which detects a specified part of a target subject from an image of the electric signals obtained by the solid state image sensor; a light-axis shifting unit which adjusts a light axis position of the incident light entering the solid state image sensor through the lens unit; and a control unit which computes a zoom magnification ratio for the lens unit and a shift amount of the incident light position for the light-axis shifting unit based on the size and position of the specified part of the target subject detected by the image processing unit, such that the specified part has a predetermined size and is positioned in a predetermined position, wherein the image pickup device is configured such that when the target subject is photographed, the control unit computes the zoom magnification ratio and the shift amount from the size and position of the specified part of the target subject, and the image pickup device captures an automatically-set composition image containing the specified part of the target subject with the predetermined size and in the predetermined position by setting the zoom magnification ratio to the computed ratio and the shift amount to the computed shift amount.