The still camera includes an imaging section which forms an image of an object to be photographed and outputs analog image data; an A/D conversion section which performs A/D conversion upon this analog image data; an aperture device which controls the amount of light incident upon the imaging device; a compression processing section which compresses the digital image data from the A/D conversion section; a memory card upon which the digital image data thus compressed by the compression processing section is stored; a photometric section which measures the brightness of the object to be photographed; and a compression ratio setting section which derives and controls the compression ratio for the compression processing section, based at least upon the distance to an object to be photographed.