It is an object of this invention to provide an apparatus which can properly expose a main object regardless of the background conditions. In order to achieve this object, there is provided an apparatus comprising a photometric unit for receiving object light and converting the object light into luminance signals of a plurality of areas, and a control unit for calculating the histogram of the luminance distribution on the basis of the luminance signals of the plurality of areas converted by the photometric unit, and controlling the operation of an illumination device for illuminating the object on the basis of the calculation result.