Everything Digital Cameras

The conventional camera depended entirely on chemicals and mechanical processes – nothing else was required to make them work. Following along on the footsteps of major technological breakthroughs in consumer electronics, the new digital camera is part of this fundamental shift in technology.

The digital camera has two things: a built-in computer, and electronic recorded images. They have not entirely replaced the conventional camera, though, as film represents the highest quality of pictures.

The early digital cameras were used to store images on memory devices within the camera, then transferring the images to the computer with the help of cables. Today, most digital camera makers provide reusable and removable storage devices, such as SmartMedia cards, CompactFlash, cards and Memory Sticks. Some other removable storage devices include the floppy disks, hard disks, or micro-drives, writeable CDs and DVDs. This has considerably enhanced the volume of visual data that can be stored.

A digital camera uses light converted into electrical charges, instead of film, to take pictures. It focuses this light through a lens or a series of lenses onto a sensor, which records the image electronically. The sensor used the most is employed by a CCD (charge coupled device) while others use a CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor).

If a CCD is used to transport the charge, its sensors create a high-quality, low-noise image, while the CMOS are more susceptible to noise while traditionally using less power. The CCDs consume as much as 100 times more power than that of a CMOS yet have been mass-produced for a longer time. They have a higher number of higher quality pixels yet both play the same role – they turn light into electricity.

What every photographer is looking for is clarity and high detail, with very little blurriness or a grainy look. This has to do with the resolution of the camera, which refers to the amount of detail the camera can capture. Hewlett Packard estimates that a 35mm film is about 20 million pixels, considered a very high-resolution picture – 1216×912, or 2 million total pixels, is a photo lab quality for the 4×5 picture.

To break it down even more, a 1 megapixel digital camera will produce images that are good for e-mailing or posting on the Web because their resolution is low. The images taken from a 2-megapixel camera are suitable for 4×5 inch prints while those taken from a 4-megapixel camera can produce 16×20 inch prints.

The digital cameras use four kinds of lenses. These are: fixed-focus, fixed-zoom lenses; optical-zoom lenses with automatic focus; digital-zoom lenses, and replaceable lens systems. The fixed focus and fixed zoom lenses are used in inexpensive cameras while the optical zoom lenses have both wide and telephoto options. The aperture and shutter speed are used to control the amount of light that reaches the sensor.

The aperture setting, or the size of the opening in the camera, is automatic in most digital cameras but a few allow manual adjustment. This is because certain professionals or amateurs want more control over the final image. The shutter speed is the time amount that passes through the aperture. This can be set electronically, which is different than using film in the conventional 35mm cameras. The digital camera has a digital shutter, rather than a mechanical shutter.

Overall, the digital camera and the traditional film camera have the same principals. The both have a viewfinder for aiming the camera, the lens for focusing, the ability to store several images and remove them later on, with a compact format for everything’s storage.

Two different systems yet slightly the same – the conventional camera captured images with light-sensitive film to store them after chemical development, while the digital camera used memory storage and advanced image sensor technology, capturing images to store them in digital format that is instantly available instead of having to wait. Yet the digital camera is more environmentally friendly, keeping up with the issues of the world while photographing these issues at the moment they occur.

By: Mike Singh

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digital camera

Basically a digital camera is a deice use to capture pictures without the use of films. Unlike the conventional camera, the digital camera does not rely on mechanical and chemical processes. It has a built in computer and records the images it captures in an electronic form. Having and operating one does not even require the use of electricity.

Since the images that a digital camera captures is in electronic form, it is a language recognized by computers. This language is called pixels, tiny colored dots represented by ones and zeros that make up the picture that you just took. Just like any conventional cameras, a digital camera is furnished with a series of lenses that focus the light and creates the image that you want to capture. The difference here is then; a conventional camera focuses its light on a film while a digital camera focuses the light into a semiconductor device that electronically records the light. Remember the built in computer, it comes in here and breaks this information to digital data resulting to all the features of the digital camera.

Another feature of the digital camera is that it has a sensor that converts light into electrical charges. A charge coupled device or CCD is an image sensor that is found in a digital camera. While other low-end digital camera use complementary metal oxide semiconductor or CMOS as an image device, it can still become better and more famous in the future but most engineers are do not believe that it can replace the CCD for higher-end digital cameras.

A collection of tiny diodes, the CCD gathers electrons when they are struck by photons or the light particles. Each diode or photosite is sensitive to light, meaning that the brighter the light, the number of the electrons gathering will be larger

The price of a digital camera nowadays have been depreciating, one of the main reasons of this is because of the introduction of CMOS image sensors, this is because CMOS sensors are less expensive and are easier to manufacture than CCD sensors. A CCD and CMOS sensor works the same way at first, by converting the light electrical charges into photosites. Simply putting it, is to think that a digital camera works in such a way as thinking that the millions of tiny solar cells, each of which forms a part of the whole image. Both CCD and CMOS do this task using different methods.

When shopping for the best digital camera, take note of these key features.

Image quality. Check the resolution of the camera. The higher the resolution, the more thou will be able to enlarge your picture without the grainy or the out-of-focus effect that we all want to avoid.

Lens. Choose a digital camera with better digital zoom. The digital zoom of the camera will enable you take the pixels from the image sensor and incorporate them to make an image.

Power. Always opt for rechargeable batteries, they can always come in handy, plus you don’t waste as much money on the disposable ones.

Options. So you can brag to your friends how good a photographer or artist you are. Or choose the one that gives options that best cater to your lifestyle, so you won’t ever whine how you never get the right pictures.

Memory. If you’re a photo freak, be sure that you have enough memory in your camera to take all the wacky, freaky, funny and just about any photo you can. Think 512MB if you’re a photo junkie and takes pictures of just about anything.

Computer Interface. Always make sure that it is compatible with your PC, laptop, palmtop or whatever your local picture printer software is, you don’t want to go running around the whole state or the country looking for a computer that’s compatible with your digital camera, wont you?!

Physical. If you are going to be bringing it everywhere, choose a handy and portable digital camera. This way, it won’t always feel as heavy and bulky as those cameras that you see professional photographers are always dragging on their neck. Don’t they ever get tired of that?!

These are just the basic things you have to look for in a digital camera when you buy one. A digital camera is so great that it is quickly replacing all conventional cameras in the market, with all its technology and portability, truly the digital camera is the future of cameras.



By: Nicholas Tan

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