1. An image pickup apparatus comprising: an objective optical system including a focus lens for causing a focus position to change, the objective optical system forming an optical image of a subject; an image pickup device picking up the optical image and outputting an image; a contrast AF section causing the image pickup device to acquire a plurality of images while causing the focus position to change, calculating a contrast evaluation value of each of the acquired images, and adjusting the focus position so that a peak value of the contrast evaluation value is taken; an amount-of-motion detecting section detecting, from the plurality of images acquired in a time series by the image pickup device, an amount of motion of the subject in each region in the images; and a control section detecting a region to be excluded where the amount of motion is equal to or larger than a predetermined threshold, and controlling the contrast AF section so as to calculate another contrast evaluation value in a region where the region to be excluded is excluded from a calculation target region of the contrast evaluation value, wherein the contrast AF section corrects the other contrast evaluation value, based on an area of the calculation target region and an area of the region where the region to be excluded is excluded from the calculation target region.