How Digital Cameras Work

Many people have thrown out their old film cameras in favor of their popular digital counterparts. Digital cameras are attractive due to their LCD screens where you can look at your pictures, as well as all the special effects that you can use while photographing. That's not even to mention the ease with which you can share and print out your photos. This article takes a brief look at how digital cameras work.

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With the majority of cameras, pictures basically form when light is burned onto a photosensitive substance or device. The lens lets in a brief moment of light when you press your shutter button, and this is flashed onto the photosensitive item to save the moment for future printing. The photosensitive substance inside film cameras is the film itself, while digital cameras have a tiny electronic device that records light.

Most digital devices that we rely on have to translate an analog signal into a digital one. For example, phones work by taking an analog signal (our voice), changing it to a digital one so that it can be sent over the airwaves, then turning it back into analog for the person on the other line to hear. Digital cameras work in a similar fashion.

Inside electric, battery-powered cameras, there is a device that translates the analog light signal into a digital, pixellated one. Most cameras rely on charge-coupled devices, or CCDs. Others use complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices, or CMOSs. Both work to translate light into a "picture" of electrons.

CCDs have been around longer than CMOSs, which means that they have been more highly developed. Therefore, cameras with CCDs typically have more pixels than those with CMOSs. Additionally, they are more sensitive to light and produce less "noise" or graininess in the photo. On the other hand CMOS devices use about 100x less power than a CCD, which means that the camera battery will last longer.

As mentioned above, pixels play a very important role as well. Pixel stands for picture (pix) element (el), and this title aptly describes their function. Basically, a pixel is a tiny unit of the whole image. The higher the pixel amount, the tinier the little squares are. This means that your picture will look smoother and more life-like rather than, well, pixellated into a bunch of squares of color. Pixels basically take the electron information from the CCD or CMOS and turn it into a piece of the image. All of theses pieced together is the whole picture.