An image pickup apparatus includes: a solid-state image pickup device having a plurality of photoelectric conversion elements, a plurality of vertical transfer paths disposed in respective vertical lines of the plurality of photoelectric conversion elements and configured to vertically transfer charges, a single horizontal transfer path configured to horizontally transfer the charges transferred from each of the vertical transfer paths, and two charge/voltage converters provided in both ends of the horizontal transfer path; and a transfer signal controller configured to control directions to which the charges are transferred in the horizontal transfer path, wherein the solid-state image pickup device is driven such that the image pickup signals are outputted from the two charge/voltage converters when a monitoring operation is carried out, and is driven such that the image pickup signals are outputted from one of the two charge/voltage converters when obtaining the image pickup signals for recording of a still image.