PURPOSE: To improve the picture quality of an entire picture without increasing a recording rate by dividing a picture, composing background pictures with high resolution by using the plural picture photographed by scanning, and putting a foreground picture with low resolution in a corresponding position in the background picture.

CONSTITUTION: An image pickup part 3 is movement-controlled by a shaft motor 9 for right and left rotation and a shaft motor 10 for up and down rotation of a scan driving part 2, a lens group 13 is movement-controlled by a zoom motor 11, and areas obtained by dividing the picture are scanned and photographed. The photographed picture information with high resolution is stored in a background picture memory 7 by a control part 5, an one background picture is formed. Similarly, the foreground picture is scanned and photographed, and the photographed picture information is stored in an overlapped picture memory 8 by the control part 5. The division is operated so that the resolution of the foreground picture can be lower than that of the background picture. Then, the front picture is put in the corresponding position of the background by the control part 5.