Imaging apparatus and method of recognizing target object

An imaging apparatus comprising:

• an imaging optical system that is formed of a wide-angle optical system and a telephoto optical system having a common optical axis;
• a directional sensor that has a plurality of pixels constituted of photoelectric conversion elements two-dimensionally arranged and that respectively pupil-divides rays incident through the wide-angle and telephoto optical systems so as to selectively receive the rays;
• a panning/tilting mechanism that rotates an imaging section, which includes the imaging optical system and the directional sensor, in horizontal and vertical directions;
• an image acquisition section that respectively acquires a wide-angle image, for which light is received from the directional sensor through the wide-angle optical system, and a telephoto image for which light is received from the directional sensor through the telephoto optical system;
• a target object detection section that detects a first target object from the wide-angle image by performing image processing on the wide-angle image acquired by the image acquisition section,
• wherein the target object detection section includes a moving object detection section that performs image recognition of a moving object on the basis of the wide-angle images continuously acquired by the image acquisition section, and that detects the image recognized moving object as the first target object;
• a panning/tilting control section that controls the panning/tilting mechanism on the basis of information about a position of the first target object, which is detected by the target object detection section, within the wide-angle image such that the first target object is positioned at the center of the wide-angle image;
• and
• an image holding section that holds the telephoto image for a predetermined time period, if the moving object detection section detects the first target object as a moving object.