Inside a Digital Camera

If you use a digital camera, it can help to have a little deeper understanding how these modern wonders work. Briefly, digital cameras have a series of lenses that focus light onto a sensor instead of film. The sensor electronically records the image, and transfers it to the "brains" of the camera. Here it is organized and then converted into binary data, so it can be stored in memory or on removable memory units for later reading by a computer or printer.

When it comes to the sensor, most digital cameras use a charge-coupled device (CCD), while other cameras use a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) instead. Both sensors convert light into electrical charges, which are then read by the electronics in the camera and transferred to the relevant storage media.

As we all learned in grade school, there are three primary colors. Digital cameras use filters to divide the light into those three colors during the conversion process. Good quality cameras have three separate sensors for filtering, with each sensor matching one strand of light.

Digital cameras also control the amount of light that actually reaches the sensor. They do this through the aperture or hole size, and through the shutter speed. Most cameras have automatic aperture setting though some do allow for manual control, which is preferable for professional photographers and advanced amateurs. Shutter speed is set electronically.

Lenses for digital cameras come in four varieties: digital-zoom lenses; fixed-zoom lenses; replaceable lens systems; and fixed-focus. Fixed lenses, both zoom and fixed focus, tend to be found in the cheaper cameras. Optical zoom lenses can have both wide angle and telephoto options. Digital zoom lenses don't actually zoom a piece of glass, but rather take pixels from the central part of the image, and enlarge them. This appears to be a zoom, but if you look closely, you will notice that they are more grainy or fuzzy images than you get without invoking the zoom option.

An LCD screen is standard on most digital cameras today, and they help in previewing images and also checking them out after taking a shot. Many screens are rather small, because there is only so much space on a camera for them. It is always best to transfer the images to a computer for viewing. In terms of image quality in general, the higher resolution the camera, the better the image quality.

For printing photos, resolution of the original image is also key. A low quality camera such as those found in many cell phones will create images that are really only useful for emailing or for web pages. A 2-megapixel camera produces images that can be blown up to about 4x6 inches. Four megapixels will create nice 16x20 inch images, but with falling prices on most digital cameras, if you enjoy photography and enlarging photos, don't settle for less than six megapixels.

Early digital cameras stored images on memory resources built into the camera. Images were then transferred to computers with the help of cables. Most modern digital camera makers utilize reusable and removable storage devices. These devices include SmartMedia cards, CompactFlash cards and other memory sticks. Other, less common removable storage devices include hard disks or microdrives, and writeable CDs or DVDs. These options have considerably enhanced the volume of visual data that can be stored as well as the overall flexibility of the modern digital camera.

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Wilfred Ursley is a writer for several respected Internet sites, with information on consumer products and family health topics.
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