An ophthalmic photographing apparatus comprising a photographing optical system for obtaining a regional image of an examinee's eye, comprising a light source, a focusing optical element movable in an optical-axis direction by a driving mechanism, and a photodetector, and a control unit controlling driving of the mechanism and obtain the image based on a signal from the photodetector, wherein the control unit further moves the optical element in predetermined steps/continuously to obtain the image at each position, calculates frequency distribution of luminance of each of the images to detect a change characteristic of luminance values having frequencies equal or exceeding a threshold value in the frequency distribution with respect to the optical element position, and detects a focus position of the optical element based on the change characteristics to move the optical element to a position corresponding to the detected focus position.