When using a digital still camera to sense and capture an image of a medium
with a bar code being recorded thereon for indication of information to be input
to the digital still camera (such as information indicative of photographing conditions
and/or information representing processing conditions of image processing), judgment
is done to determine whether a region equivalent to the bar code is present within
an image, and then a region equivalent to the bar code is extracted for analyzation
of coded information as indicated by such bar code; if no contradiction is found
in the coded information then let it be stored in a storage or "memory" region
pursuant to the kind of such coded information. And the information thus stored
will be used to perform setting of image pickup conditions and/or setup of image
processing condition.