A laser beam illumination equipment has a laser beam generation section and a mirror unit. An image generation section has a camera and a camera controller. A laser beam illumination control section sets a pulse period of a laser beam to the same period as an exposure period of the camera. With this configuration, a state change of a specimen can be set uniform over exposure durations. A pulse train of the laser beam may be generated based on a synchronization signal which is output from the camera controller.