As shown in FIG. 16, in the electronic still camera according to the seventh embodiment, to obtain the signal required to perform white-balance control from the image sensor before actually forming a still image video signal to be recorded on a recording medium such as a magnetic disk, the image sensor 1 is cleared between t0 and t1 in FIG. 16, and between t1 and t2 the shutter SH is opened to sto