An image pickup apparatus including: CCD image pickup device; a light blocking plate for shutting out light incident upon the image pickup device; an exposure period controlling section for setting exposure time by controlling the light blocking plate and the image pickup device; a dark signal storing section for storing dark signals obtained from the image pickup device in a state where light is shut out by the light blocking plate; a subtracting section for subtracting the dark signals from main image pickup signals of the image pickup device; a defect detecting section for detecting defects from the subtracted image pickup signals outputted from the subtracting section; and a defect correcting section for performing correction of the detected fault pixels. It is thereby possible to achieve an image pickup apparatus capable of detecting and correcting at high accuracy those fault pixels occurring afterwards because of changes due to the passage of time or those fault pixels transiently occurring under certain modes.