A photoacoustic apparatus includes a light source (20), a probe (2) including a reception element (30) that receives a photoacoustic wave generated by a subject (8) in response to being illuminated with light (11) and output a time-series reception signal, a signal data acquisition unit (7) that generates reception signal data based on the time-series reception signal and stores the resultant data, a light fluence acquisition unit (5) that acquires a light fluence at a position of interest in the subject, and an information acquisition unit (9) that acquires subject information based on the stored reception signal data, wherein in a case where the light fluence at the position of interest is smaller than a threshold value, the signal data acquisition unit reduces the amount of data for a part of the time-series reception signal that corresponds to the position of interest.
