IMAGING APPARATUS AND IMAGING METHOD

An imaging apparatus and an imaging method, wherein a focus location direction discriminator estimates a direction toward a focus location based on two contrast evaluation values corresponding to two imaging optical systems having different image focusing locations. Therefore, the imaging apparatus and the imaging method can directly start an AF operation at current image focusing locations of two imaging optical systems, without setting the image focusing locations to fixed initial locations in a focusing operation of the imaging optical systems. As a result, AF operation time and power consumption are reduced without failing to find a direction of image focusing location.