Patent attributes
An image pickup apparatus has an image pickup device, a defect-information-storing unit that stores defect information relative to a defective pixel in the image pickup element, a compensation-signal-generating unit that generates a compensation signal for each defective pixel, first and second compensation units that compensate for the pixel signal relative to the defective pixel indicated by the defect information with and without applying the compensation signal to the pixel signal, and a compensation-switching unit that switches between a first signal compensated by the first compensation unit and a second signal compensated by the second compensation unit based on a comparison result of a signal level of the compensation signal with a signal level of a predetermined compensation-switching reference signal.
