Imaging apparatus and a camera for vehicles

The present invention relates to a camera apparatus for vehicles including an imaging element (31) and a lens (30). The camera apparatus comprises a gradation generation unit (35) for stepwise changing the light amount reaching a whole or part of the imaging element (31). By this, a gradation region (21) is formed on the imaging element (31) and it absorbs assembling errors during manufacturing and positional shifts attributed to a road surface slope or the like. Even when an inverse light state is caused, it is possible to improve the image processing performance with an economical configuration.