To perform constant rate control without prolonging a time for recording an image in a recording medium.

An image pickup device is provided with an index value calculating circuit 16 for extracting an index value for predicting a code amount in compression from a video signal acquired from a CCD (solid-state image pickup element) 12; and a compression coefficient control circuit 17 for controlling a compression rate to be used in an image compression unit 18, on the basis of the index value acquired by the circuit 16. The circuit 17 uses an index value obtained by the circuit 16 at the time of photographing image confirming operation before image pickup, and decides the compression rate at the time of the image pickup operation.

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