PURPOSE: To provide the device which judges the rank of a defect on the surface of a film with a simple constitution.

CONSTITUTION: A surface state examination device 100 having an oblique illumination device 30, an image pickup device 11 which picks up the image of the surface of a body to be examined, a processor 20 which examines the surface state of the body to be examined based on the image pickup result of the image pickup device 11, and an output device 40 which outputs the processing result of the processor 20, is provided with an inclination filter 51 which is designed in correlation to the illuminance distribution of oblique illumination and of which transmittance stepwise changes, and the processor 20 subjects the black- and-white video input signal, which is adjusted by the inclination filter 51, from the image pickup device 11 to A/D conversion, and the body to be examined is discriminated as an indefectible/defective article and the rank of a defect on this body is judged with respect to the input signal.