An image pickup apparatus includes horizontally and vertically arranged charge-generating pixels, vertical charge transfer elements reading out charges generated by the pixels of vertical pixel lines, a horizontal charge transfer element reading out charges read out by the vertical transfer elements, in the horizontal direction, and a controller controlling a first mode dividing the pixel charges into fields and sequentially reading out the fields to form an image of one frame, and a third mode thinning out the pixel charges of a first field and reading them out to the vertical transfer elements, thinning out charges of the pixels of a third field to read them out to the vertical transfer elements, adding together the charges read out to the vertical transfer elements in the first and third fields and reading out the added charges to the horizontal charge transfer element to form an image of one frame.