The second shutter switch 232 turns on when the shutter button 101 is completely manipulated, or in other words, is fully pressed, and generates a second shutter switch signal SW2. The system control unit 218 interprets the second shutter switch signal SW2 as a still image shooting instruction and starts still image shooting operations based on exposure conditions determined in the AE processing. Each unit is then controlled to execute a series of shooting processing from reading signals from the image capturing unit 211 to generating an image file containing the still image data obtained from shooting and writing the image file into the recording medium 228.
The mode changing switch 103 switches the operating mode of the system control unit 218 among a still image shooting mode, a moving image shooting mode, the playback mode, and the like. The still image shooting mode includes an auto shooting mode, an auto scene determination mode, a manual mode, an aperture priority mode (Av mode), a shutter speed priority mode (Tv mode), and a program AE mode (P mode). There are also various types of scene modes, custom modes, and the like as shooting settings for different shooting scenes. The user can directly switch to any of the shooting modes mentioned above using the mode changing switch 103. Alternatively, the user can selectively switch to any of a plurality of modes displayed by using the operation unit 229 after first switching to a shooting mode list screen using the mode changing switch 103. Likewise, the moving image shooting mode may include a plurality of modes.