Patent ID: 8803996

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: an image sensor configured to output an image signal by taking an object image; a driver configured to drive the image sensor so as to take the object image through interlace scanning or progressive scanning; a detector configured to detect a color level of the object image based on color difference signals extracted from the image signal and determine whether or not the color level of the object image falls within a predetermined range centering on a predetermined color based on the image signal output from the image sensor; and a controller configured to control the driver to select interlace image shooting used to take the object image through the interlace scanning of the image sensor in a case where the detector determines that the color level of the object image falls within the predetermined range centering on the predetermined color, and to select progressive image shooting used to take the object image through the progressive scanning of the image sensor in a case where the detector determines that the color level of the object image does not fall within the predetermined range centering on the predetermined color.