An image pickup apparatus includes a microcomputer that sets, when a proper exposure time is longer than a frame period, one or more long exposure times equal to or shorter than the frame period and a short exposure time such that a total time of the one or more long exposure times and the short exposure time is equal to the proper exposure time, an image pickup device that outputs a long exposure image and a short exposure image for every frame period, and a cumulative addition processing section that adds the short exposure image and the long exposure image or long exposure images of one or more frames to generate a synthetic image corresponding to the proper exposure time.