PURPOSE: To enable automatic exposure correction at the time of backlight by using a high luminance elimination device, a smoothing device, a level detector and an exposure controller to implement exposure control based on a high luminance elimination signal obtained through elimination of the high luminance part of a proper exposure signal.

CONSTITUTION: A light made incident by a lens 1 is given to an aperture 2, in which the luminous quantity is controlled and given to a CCD 3 being an image pickup element from an optical system and the CCD 3 converts the light into a luminance signal 3a corresponding to the intensity of the light.' The luminance signal 3a is processed by a signal processing unit 4 to be an exposure signal represented by a voltage and outputted to an aperture controller 5 and an exposure controller 15. Then the aperture controller 5 controls the aperture 2 so as to keep the exposure signal 4a proper. Furthermore, the exposure signal 4a is amplified by an amplifier 7 to eliminate (16) the high luminance signal in excess of a threshold level, the resulting signal is smoothed by a smoothing circuit 8 and a smoothing signal is outputted to a level detector 9 and the gain is controlled up to a present reference voltage by a control circuit 10. Then the exposure is controlled based on the high luminance elimination signal of the proper exposure signal by a controller 15.