IMAGE PICKUP DEVICE

PURPOSE:To attain secure and quick focusing-operation even at the time of photographing an object with movement in an image pickup device by executing focusing operation with so-called up-hill method auto-focusing. CONSTITUTION:The image pickup device is provided with an image pickup element 2, a focus evaluation value detecting means 5, a first focusing control means 9 monitoring the change of the detected focus evaluating value 8 and executing focusing-operation to fix it at a position to be a maximum evaluation value, an outline component extracting means 11 extracting the outline component of the object from an image pickup video signal and a second auto-focusing control means 16 controlling focusing operation by the first focus control means 9 with the presence/absence of the extracted outline component 15. When the outline component is being extracted and even when the focus evaluation value 8 changes, the image pickup device does not resume focusing-operation, and only when the outline component is no longer extracted, it resumes focusing operation.