An endoscopic apparatus having an image pickup system operating as follows. Before picking up a still image in a body cavity that almost no light can reach, the system extinguishes LED and resets charges accumulated in respective pixels in a CMOS image sensor. In this reset state, the system illuminates LED and allows the CMOS image sensor to pick up a still image. While the charges are being read from the pixels, the system extinguishes LED and prevents further charges from being accumulated in the pixels from which the charges have not been read yet.
