Highlight suppression image pickup apparatus

a highlight suppression image pickup apparatus:

• comprising:
• a camera part provided with a lens optical system, an active filter part which is disposed in a vicinity of a focal plane of the camera part and which can, the active filter part being configured to control an amount of transmitted light,
• a light sensing means which senses a light transmission amount of the active filter part,
• a highlight suppression signal producing part which produces a highlight suppression signal which controls the light transmission amount of the active filter part such that an amount of light sensed by the light sensing means becomes a predetermined reference value,
• wherein the highlight suppression signal which controls the light transmission amount of the active filter part is an image signal,
• wherein the highlight suppression signal producing part produces the highlight suppression signal on a basis of an image output from at least one color channel of one or two or more color channels output from the camera part,
• the active filter part optically controls, in accordance with the highlight suppression signal, an amount of light transmitted to an imaging plane of each of the color channels, and
• the image acquired in the camera part is transmitted through the active filter part, is picked up by an imaging element of each color channel and is output as a highlight-suppressed image in which highlight is optically controlled.