Iris identifying apparatus

Claim 1

An iris identifying apparatus for identifying a target person to be picked up by extracting an image of an iris from a picked-up image of an eye of said target person, comprising: a view window into which said target person looks; an infrared illumination having a peak wavelength in a range of infrared rays; an image pickup device which has a sensitivity in said range of infrared rays and picks up said image of said eye of said target person through said view window; a guide light which has peak wavelength in a range of visible rays and guides a line of sight of said target person through said view window; optical-axis aligning means for aligning said line of sight of said target person viewing said guide light with a photographing optical axis of said image pickup device; and a controller which causes said guide light to change its illumination from flickering ON-OFF to substantially an ON state depending upon a position of said eye of said target person wherein said controller comprises an image-pickup notification means for turning on said guide light and notifying said target person of said eye having entered an image pickup distance of said image pickup device, wherein said image-pickup notification means turns off said guide light when a focus value is 0 indicating a state where said image pickup device is not picking up said image, turns on said guide light when said focus value is equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value and flickers said guide light when said focus value is smaller than said threshold value, and said focus value of 100 indicates that said image pickup distance is an optimal image pickup distance.