How does a Digital Camera Work

Remember the old days, a special occasion was just incomplete without a photograph, that too with the typical poses and a fight to be a part of those few snaps. You can't experience such a moment today. The use of a digital camera, often referred as a digicam, is no longer limited to a special occasion. The moment you see something interesting, just capture it with a click and in no time the image is before your eyes. Now, you can either save it or click on the 'X' (yes the delete button) and erase it. This is what a digital camera is!. Click, save, delete, transfer, record, zoom in, zoom out and much more can be done with this small package of technology. Digital cameras are one of those consumer electronic products that have undergone remarkable changes due to application of new technology and photography is no longer restricted to professionals. Even you can be a photographer. Wondering how? 'Digital camera' is the answer! But "how does a digital camera work?" could be a question in your mind. Here's the answer.

Basic Technology of a Digital Camera
In digital cameras, the technology of converting analog information into digital information is used. Digital information is represented by ones and zeros or bits, a language that its built-in computer understands. A digital camera takes the image in the electronic format which is converted into the binary format. Each image is a long string of such 1's and 0's and the smallest unit of an image is known as a pixel.

Basics of a Digital Camera
Light is focused by a series of lenses on a semiconductor device. This device records the light electronically and an image of the captured scene is created. This electronic information is then converted into digital data. An image sensor is used by the digital cameras to convert light into electrical charges. This sensor is of two types: charge coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS). The CCD sensors create high-quality images as compared to those created by CMOS sensors. CMOS sensors consume less power as compared to the CCDs. Though there are many such differences between CCD and CMOS, both of them perform the same function of turning light into electricity.

Digital Camera Exposure and Focus
A digicam controls the amount of light reaching the sensor with the aperture and shutter speed components. The size of opening in the camera is known as aperture, which can be automatic or manually controlled. Manual adjustment gives the user more control over the final output. The duration of time for which the light can pass through the aperture is referred to as the shutter speed. The task of capturing the required amount of light to take a good image is performed together by these two components.

The lenses of the camera control the way in which the light is focused on the sensor. Though the lenses on digital cameras are very similar to those of conventional cameras, focal length is the main difference between the two. Focal length is nothing but the distance between the lens and the surface of the sensor and this length determines the zoom. On increasing the focal length, the image is magnified and the objects appear to be closer and the reverse happens on decreasing the focal length. A zoom lens is the one in which the focal length can be adjusted. Digital cameras have optical zoom, digital zoom or both. Some cameras have the macro focusing feature by which they can take the snaps from a very less distance from the subject. Optical zoom lenses modify the focal length of the lens instead of just magnifying the information that hits the sensor. Digital zoom forms a full-size image by interpolating the pixels from the center of the image sensor. This may lead to an output of grainy or blurry images but that depends on the resolution of the image.

Digital Camera Resolution
Resolution is the amount of detail, assessed in pixels, that a camera can capture. The amount of detail a camera can capture depends upon the pixels of the camera. More the pixels it has, the more details it can capture. Also, larger pictures will be clear and not blurry. The resolutions range from the minimum of 256x256 or 65,000 pixels to 4064x2704 or 11.1 megapixels.

Digital Camera Colors
Filtering is used for a colored image, by most sensors to look at the light in its three primary colors, red, green and blue. Once all the three colors are recorded by the camera, a full spectrum is created by combining them. The colors can be recorded in different ways. A quality digital camera uses three sensors. Each one of these has a different filter to view light in the primary colors. A beam splitter is used to direct the light to the sensors. The beam splitter divides light into three different sensors equally, giving each sensor an identical look of the image. Then comes the role of the filters, due to which each sensor responds to only one of the primary colors. This method enables the camera to record each of the three primary colors at each pixel location.

Storing Digital Photos
Most digital cameras have an LCD screen display, which enables you to view your picture right away. This is one of the main advantages of a digital camera, as you get an immediate view of what you have captured. Obviously, viewing the image on your camera is not all, you may load the picture onto your computer, email it or print it. Previously, digital cameras used to have fixed storage inside the camera and the images were transferred by connecting the camera to a computer with cables so as to transfer the images. Most of today's cameras use removable storage like memory sticks which are of removable flash memory card format. The images are usually stored in TIFF, which is an uncompressed format or JPEG, which is a compressed format and some use RAW format.

Now you would have got the answer to your question, "how does a digital camera work?" and realized there is so much between clicking a photograph and viewing the image. Read the user manual, explore the various options available on your digicam and capture the world into it.