In a digital still camera, a character font readout control circuit (20) has the character constituted by 46 lines read out from a font memory (23) into a display memory (8) when the monitor device complies with the NTSC system, and the number of lines of the character increased to 54 lines and then written into the display memory (8) when the monitor device complies with the PAL system. The memory capacity can be reduced since the font for only the NTSC system, and not the PAL system,needs to be stored.