The Inner Workings of Digital Cameras

Scientific advancements in microchip technology and the ability to convert analog

data into digital images have given rise to many advances in consumer electronics. The digital camera is one such device that consumers cant seem to get enough of. But just how do these compact little wonders work to provide us with hundreds of images. The front end of a digital camera is much like a conventional film driven camera. There is a lens that focuses on the subject matter and allows light into the camera where it hits the aperture. The aperture controls the amount of light allowed into the camera and is activated when you push the button to snap the picture. After this point is when the difference between the two types of camera begins. Instead of the light hitting photographic film it hits an image sensor. This image sensor is an electronic semiconductor that consists of photosites that measure light intensity. Each photosite is covered with a color filter of red, green, or blue in a Bayer pattern. Because the human eye is two times as sensitive to the green color there are twice as many photosites with the green filter as there are with the other two colors. There are million individually filtered of photosites on the image sensor and each one is known as a pixel. It is pretty well known that the greater the number of pixels the sharper the detail of the image captured. The sharpness or amount of detail is known as resolution and is determined by the how many pixels are in image sensor as well as the quality of the lens which focuses the light. For example higher end digital cameras will have somewhere around 12 million pixels while professional grade cameras will have 20 million or more pixels. As the light hits the pixels it is recorded as an analog signal which is converted through a converter into digital binary numbers. A computer ship then takes these binary numbers and analyzes them according to their color. This RAW data is then run through a process known as demosaicing. During the demosaicing technique each individual pixel color is determined according to the colors of the pixels that surround it. As an example; if a red pixel is surrounded by blue and green pixels then the cameras internal processor sees it as white because the color white is made up of these three colors. After demosaicing the image is subjected to the camera settings as specified by the photographer. It will make adjustments based on brightness, color saturation, contrast, and any other settings the camera has been set to. Once the image has been captured and manipulated it can be saved in one of several different file types. The two most common are uncompressed formats like TIFF or compressed formats such as JPEG. Which type of format a camera will use is entirely up to the photographer and can be set using the menus and settings built into the camera. Once the image has been saved into the cameras internal memory or memory card it is ready to be downloaded to a computer. Once downloaded it can be manipulated using photo editing software and then printed. As digital camera technology moves forward and advances the images the average photographer can capture will get better and better.

The Inner Workings of Digital Cameras

By: Andrew Bicknell

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