Patent ID: 8063946

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: a rotation control unit configured to rotate the image pickup apparatus and to output a signal indicating a rotation of the image pickup apparatus; an image pickup unit configured to output a long-exposure image signal with a relatively long exposure time and a short-exposure image signal with a relatively short exposure time; a signal processing unit configured to generate a combined image signal with a relatively wide dynamic range at least wider than that of the long-exposure image signal or that of the short-exposure image signal by combining the long-exposure image signal and the short-exposure image signal; a detection unit configured to generate a luminance integrated value of the combined image signal; and a control unit configured to perform exposure correction control using the luminance integrated value and to receive the signal indicating the rotation of the image pickup apparatus from the rotation control unit, wherein the control unit initializes a correction value for use in the exposure correction control during the rotation of the image pickup apparatus in response to receipt of the signal indicating the rotation of the image pickup apparatus from the rotation control unit.