Wet-type image forming apparatus

A wet-type image forming apparatus for forming a toner image on an image carrier using liquid developer including toner dispersed in carrier liquid for forming an image on a transfer target member, comprising:

• an image forming unit, including a liquid developer carrier for conveying said liquid developer carried on a surface thereof to a development portion that faces said image carrier, for forming said toner image on said image carrier by applying a development bias to said liquid developer carrier to adhere said toner in said liquid developer carried on said liquid developer carrier to said image carrier and to develop an electrostatic latent image on said image carrier using said toner;
• a density detection unit for detecting an image density of said toner image as a patch image formed by said image forming unit;
• and
• a charge amount control unit for controlling a charge amount of said toner on said liquid developer carrier, wherein
• said image forming unit forms a plurality of patch images, and for each successive patch image, said charge amount control unit changes a charge amount of said toner on said liquid developer carrier in a state in which said development bias applied to said liquid developer carrier is maintained at a prescribed value,
• said density detection unit detects a respective image density of each successive patch image from the plurality of patch images thereby detecting a range of charge amount of said toner, said range including at least a charge amount in which said image density of one patch image is almost saturated in a state in which said development bias applied to said liquid developer carrier is set at said prescribed value and a charge amount in which said image density of another patch image is saturated, and
• the charge amount of said toner at a time when normal image formation is performed to form said image on said transfer target member is set to be equal to or greater than said range of charge amount of said toner in which said image density of said patch image is almost saturated.