This invention makes it possible to produce a high quality synthesized panoramic image when it is difficult to highly precisely shift the image pickup direction. The present invention provides an image pickup apparatus for synthetically generating a first image, or a whole image of an entire object of shooting, the apparatus comprising an image pickup section that sequentially changes the image pickup direction and picks up section of images of the object of shooting to be imaged, a reading section that reads second images, each having a predetermined width and constituting a part of the image picked up on an imaging plane in the image pickup section, a defining section that defines a reading range of each second image to be read by the reading section, a relative position identifying section that identifies the relative position of each second image relative to the first image, and a synthesizing section that generates the first image by sequentially and synthetically combining the second images read out by the reading section, the defining section being adapted to determine the first quantity of movement of each second image by referring to the relative position thereof as identified by the relative position identifying section and define the reading range of the second image to be read out next according to the first quantity of movement.