Compound eye image-taking system and apparatus with the same

A compound eye image-taking system which can obtain bright parallax images and calculate proper parallax information from these parallax images by a simple and compact construction, is disclosed. This compound eye image-taking system comprises of an optical element array in which a plurality of optical elements. The optical axes of the optical elements are different to each other. Additionally, the system comprises of a image-pickup unit in which a plurality of image-pickup portions which are formed on the same semiconductor substrate and picks up images formed by the optical elements, respectively; and a parallax calculating circuit which calculates parallax information between images picked-up by the image-pickup portions.