How A Digital Camera Works

An electronic digital camera works similar to film camera in that light comes in through the lens and is captured to create a picture. The way the image is captured is what makes a digital camera very different compared to a film camera. With a film camera, you press the shutter button which opens the shutter letting in the light. The light entering the lens is exposed to the film and results in chemical reactions on the film to produce your photograph. In a digital camera the picture is captured with an image sensor that converts the light rays into electronic signals which are then saved in a file in the buffer memory.

The light detector or image sensor is known as a charged couple device (CCD) and it is comprised of individual light sensitive picture elements popularly known as pixels. Digital cameras are usually measured in megapixels or millions of pixels. A camera which has a 3000 x 2000 array of pixels within the image sensor would contain 6,000,000 pixels and would be referred to as a 6 megapixel camera. Once the light hits the CCD it breaks it down into the millions of pixels and measures the amount of light and color to get a number for each pixel. Your digital picture is truly a long string of numbers that's stored at a file in memory. The LCD screen on the back of the camera shows you the image that the CCD is capturing.

Digital photographs should be compressed or the file size would be enormous and occupy way too much memory. The most frequent compressed format is JPG which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. The larger the amount of photo info is kept the greater the picture quality and the bigger the file. The more compressed the photo is, the lower the quality and the smaller the file size. The smaller file size makes for shorter load times plus you'll be able to store more photos in memory. One does sacrifice quality however.

The fact that digital images are stored digitally means they easier to store, share and manipulate. When you open up an image inside an editor such as Photoshop, you'll be able to change the quality of the photo by clicking on a setting. Once you do this it changes the numbers which the pixels are storing to create the effect. For instance, if you want to make the picture 10% brighter, the image editor would alter the pixel numbers by 10 % to show increased light or brightness. Some digital camera models have built-in effects and you may create a photographic effect within the camera immediately after you take the picture. Something you cannot do with film cameras.

By: Paul K Stevens

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Paul Stevens is author/publisher of an online buyer's guide to Hybrid Cameras