1. A stereo camera device comprising: a plurality of picture image taking sections, an image correction section which makes a correction of picture images taken, a parallax calculating section which calculates parallax, an amount of dislocation between a left and a right image based on the corrected images, and an image recognition section which carries out image recognition processing based on the left and the right images and the calculated parallax; the stereo camera device further comprising: a processing area setting up section which sets up an image area to be processed and a reduction ratio differently depending on a driving environment of a vehicle on which the stereo camera device is mounted; wherein, the image correction section makes correction to the picture image based on the image area and the reduction ratio set up by the processing area setting up section.