An optical pickup apparatus includes an objective lens having a numeric aperture and an incident face. An antireflection coating is formed on the incident face. A collimating lens converts laser light from a laser diode into parallel light, and causes the parallel light to be made incident on the incident face through the antireflection coating. The thickness of the antireflection coating causes a transmittance of laser light that enters the objective lens to be: set at a first predetermined transmittance value, when the numeric aperture is between zero and a first predetermined numeric aperture value; set to correlate linearly with the numeric aperture when the numeric aperture is between the first predetermined numeric aperture value and a second predetermined numeric aperture value; and set at a second predetermined transmittance value, when the numeric aperture is between the second predetermined numeric aperture value and a third predetermined numeric aperture value.