The application discloses a binocular camera. The binocular camera comprises a first imaging lens and a second imaging lens, a first image sensor and a second image sensor, and a beam slitter, wherein the beam splitter is used for dividing single beam entering the binocular camera into a first beam projecting to the first imaging lens and a second beam projecting to the second imaging lens; an optical axis of the first imaging lens and the optical axis of the second imaging lens are parallel to each other and deviate from predetermined distance in an equivalent optical path formed by making the mirror image on an optical path by using a reflecting plane in the optical path as the symmetric plane. The invention discloses a ranging method based on the binocular camera. According to the ranging method disclosed by the invention, by use of single viewing beam and the displacement distance between the optical axes of two imaging lens of the binocular camera is small, the mutual image shielding problem of two lenses are reduced to a great extent.