A digital camera (or digicam) is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography. Most 21st century cameras are digital. Front and back of Canon PowerShot A95
Digital cameras can do things film cameras cannot: displaying images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, storing thousands of images on a single small memory device, and deleting images to free storage space. The majority, including most compact cameras, can record moving video with sound as well as still photographs. Some can crop and stitch pictures and perform other elementary image editing. Some have a GPS receiver built in, and can produce Geotagged photographs.
The optical system works the same as in film cameras, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device. The diaphragm and shutter admit the correct amount of light to the imager, just as with film but the image pickup device is electronic rather than chemical. Most digicams, apart from camera phones and a few specialized types, have a standard tripod screw.
Digital cameras are incorporated into many devices ranging from PDAs and mobile phones (called camera phones) to vehicles. The Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical devices are essentially specialized digital cameras.
Digital cameras are made in a wide range of sizes, prices and capabilities. The majority are camera phones, operated as a mobile application through the cellphone menu. Professional photographers and many amateurs use larger, more expensive digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLR) for their greater versatility. Between these extremes lie digital compact cameras and bridge digital cameras that "bridge" the gap between amateur and professional cameras. Specialized cameras including multispectral imaging equipment and astrographs continue to serve the scientific, military, medical and other special purposes for which digital photography was invented.
Compact cameras are designed to be tiny and portable and are particularly suitable for casual and "snapshot" use, thus are also called point-and-shoot cameras. The smallest, generally less than 20 mm thick, are described as subcompacts or "ultra-compacts" and some are nearly credit card size.
Most, apart from ruggedized or water-resistant models, incorporate a retractable lens assembly allowing a thin camera to have a moderately long focal length and thus fully exploit an image sensor larger than that on a camera phone, and a mechanized lens cap to cover the lens when retracted. The retracted and capped lens is protected from keys, coins and other hard objects, thus making a thin, pocketable package. Subcompacts commonly have one lug and a short wrist strap which aids extraction from a pocket, while thicker compacts may have two lugs for attaching a neck strap.
Compact cameras are usually designed to be easy to use, sacrificing advanced features and picture quality for compactness and simplicity; images can usually only be stored using lossy compression (JPEG). Most have a built-in flash usually of low power, sufficient for nearby subjects. Live preview is almost always used to frame the photo. Most have limited motion picture capability. Compacts often have macro capability and zoom lenses but the zoom range is usually less than for bridge and DSLR cameras. Generally a contrast-detect autofocus system, using the image data from the live preview feed of the main imager, focuses the lens.
Typically, these cameras incorporate a nearly-silent leaf shutter into their lenses.
For lower cost and smaller size, these cameras typically use image sensors with a diagonal of approximately 6 mm, corresponding to a crop factor around 6. This gives them weaker low-light performance, greater depth of field, generally closer focusing ability, and smaller components than cameras using larger sensors.
Starting in 2011, some compact digital cameras can take 3D still photos. These 3D compact stereo cameras can capture 3D panoramic photos for play back on a 3D TV.
Bridge are higher-end digital cameras that physically and ergonomically resemble DSLRs and share with them some advanced features, but share with compacts the use of a fixed lens and a small sensor. Like compacts, most use live preview to frame the image. Their autofocus uses the same contrast-detect mechanism, but many bridge cameras have a manual focus mode, in some cases using a separate focus ring, for greater control. They originally "bridged" the gap between affordable point-and-shoot cameras and the then unaffordable earlier digital SLRs.
Due to the combination of big physical size but a small sensor, many of these cameras have very highly specified lenses with large zoom range and fast aperture, partially compensating for the inability to change lenses. On some, the lens qualifies as superzoom. To compensate for the lesser sensitivity of their small sensors, these cameras almost always include an image stabilization system to enable longer handheld exposures.
These cameras are sometimes marketed as and confused with digital SLR cameras since the appearance is similar. Bridge cameras lack the reflex viewing system of DSLRs, are usually fitted with fixed (non-interchangeable) lenses (although some have a lens thread to attach accessory wide-angle or telephoto converters), and can usually take movies with sound. The scene is composed by viewing either the liquid crystal display or the electronic viewfinder (EVF). Most have a longer shutter lag than a true dSLR, but they are capable of good image quality (with sufficient light) while being more compact and lighter than DSLRs. High-end models of this type have comparable resolutions to low and mid-range DSLRs. Many of these cameras can store images in a Raw image format, or processed and JPEG compressed, or both. The majority have a built-in flash similar to those found in DSLRs. Some of the earlier models from the year 2000-2004 era in the 2 to 5MP class starting with Fujifilm's Finepix 2800 are excellent performers both in color rendition and sharpness, being carefully made to sell at more than 20-times their current market value. Potential drawbacks to check are damaged zoom- and focussing mechanisms and unreliable or expensive storage media like SM-cards and "Memory Sticks".
In bright sun, the quality difference between a good compact camera and a digital SLR is minimal but bridgecams are more portable, cost less and have a similar zoom ability to dSLR. Thus a Bridge camera may better suit outdoor daytime activities, except when seeking professional-quality photos.
In low light conditions and/or at ISO equivalents above 800, most bridge cameras (or megazooms) lack in image quality when compared to even entry level DSLRs. However, they do have one major advantage, often not appreciated:- their much larger depth of field due to the small sensor as compared to a DSLR, allowing larger apertures with shorter exposure times.
The first New 3D Photo Mode of Bridge camera has announced by Olympus. Olympus SZ-30MR can take 3D photo in any mode from macro to landscape by release the shutter for the first shot, slowly pan until camera automatically takes a second image from a slightly different perspective. Due to 3D processing is in-built in camera, so an .MPO file will easily display on 3D televisions or laptops.
A line-scan camera is a camera device containing a line-scan image sensor chip, and a focusing mechanism. These cameras are almost solely used in industrial settings to capture an image of a constant stream of moving material. Unlike video cameras, line-scan cameras use a single array of pixel sensors, instead of a matrix of them. Data coming from the line-scan camera has a frequency, where the camera scans a line, waits, and repeats. The data coming from the line-scan camera is commonly processed by a computer, to collect the one-dimensional line data and to create a two-dimensional image. The collected two-dimensional image data is then processed by image-processing methods for industrial purposes.
Line-scan technology is capable of capturing data extremely fast, and at very high image resolutions. Usually under these conditions, resulting collected image data can quickly exceed 100 MB in a fraction of a second. Line-scan-camera–based integrated systems, therefore are usually designed to streamline the camera's output in order to meet the system's objective, using computer technology which is also affordable.
Line-scan cameras intended for the parcel handling industry can integrate adaptive focusing mechanisms to scan six sides of any rectangular parcel in focus, regardless of angle, and size. The resulting 2-D captured images could contain, but are not limited to 1D and 2D barcodes, address information, and any pattern that can be processed via image processing methods. Since the images are 2-D, they are also human-readable and can be viewable on a computer screen. Advanced integrated systems include video coding, optical character recognition (OCR) and finish-line cameras for high speed sports.
When digital cameras became common, a question many photographers asked was whether their film cameras could be converted to digital. The answer was yes and no. For the majority of 35 mm film cameras the answer is no, the reworking and cost would be too great, especially as lenses have been evolving as well as cameras. For most a conversion to digital, to give enough space for the electronics and allow a liquid crystal display to preview, would require removing the back of the camera and replacing it with a custom built digital unit.
The major reason why affordable Digital camera backs never became available was that the manufacturers of sensors were identical or associated with camera manufacturers that were interested in selling new, rather than extending the life of old equipment. In fact, the coming of digital cameras was a very beneficial to the Japanese camera industry, which showed signs of stagnation in the late 80s due to market saturation. The new digital SLRs were for the main part purposely made not to be downward-compatible in accepting the world's vast inventory of momentarily near-useless high-quality SLR lenses even if of the same bayonet. This in spite of the fact that one major high-end manufacturer used to advertise his pre-digital optics as being "like money in the bank". As of 2011, no DSLR has appeared to take the very common M42-Lenses. Russian and Chinese manufacturers have not been able to make a DSLR of any sort: it remains to be seen if they will, with the availability of the new 16MP APS-C size sensor MT9H004 from the US-manufacturer Aptina.
Many early professional SLR cameras, such as the Kodak DCS series, were developed from 35 mm film cameras. The technology of the time, however, meant that rather than being digital "backs" the bodies of these cameras were mounted on large, bulky digital units, often bigger than the camera portion itself. These were factory built cameras, however, not aftermarket conversions.
A notable exception is the Nikon E2, followed by Nikon E3, using additional optics to convert the 35mm format to a 2/3 CCD-sensor.
A few 35 mm cameras have had digital camera backs made by their manufacturer, Leica being a notable example. Medium format and large format cameras (those using film stock greater than 35 mm), have a low unit production, and typical digital backs for them cost over $10,000. These cameras also tend to be highly modular, with handgrips, film backs, winders, and lenses available separately to fit various needs.
The very large sensor these backs use leads to enormous image sizes. For example Phase One's P45 39 MP image back creates a single TIFF image of size up to 224.6 MB, and even greater pixel counts are available. Medium format digitals such as this are geared more towards studio and portrait photography than their smaller DSLR counterparts; the ISO speed in particular tends to have a maximum of 400, versus 6400 for some DSLR cameras. (Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and Nikon D3S have ISO 12800 plus Hi-3 ISO 102400)
The resolution of a digital camera is often limited by the image sensor (typically a CCD or CMOS sensor chip) that turns light into discrete signals, replacing the job of film in traditional photography. The sensor is made up of millions of "buckets" that essentially count the number of photons that strike the sensor. This means that the brighter the image at a given point on the sensor, the larger the value that is read for that pixel. Depending on the physical structure of the sensor, a color filter array may be used which requires a demosaicing/interpolation algorithm. The number of resulting pixels in the image determines its "pixel count". For example, a 640x480 image would have 307,200 pixels, or approximately 307 kilopixels; a 3872x2592 image would have 10,036,224 pixels, or approximately 10 megapixels.
The pixel count alone is commonly presumed to indicate the resolution of a camera, but this simple figure of merit is a misconception. Other factors impact a sensor's resolution, including sensor size, lens quality, and the organization of the pixels (for example, a monochrome camera without a Bayer filter mosaic has a higher resolution than a typical color camera). Where such other factors are limiting the resolution, a greater pixel count does not improve the resolution, but may rather make the digital images inconveniently large and/or exacerbate image noise. Many digital compact cameras are criticized for having excessive pixels. Sensors can be so small that their 'buckets' can easily overfill; again, resolution of a sensor can become greater than the camera lens could possibly deliver.
As the technology has improved, costs have decreased dramatically. Counting the "pixels per dollar" as a basic measure of value for a digital camera, there has been a continuous and steady increase in the number of pixels each dollar buys in a new camera, in accord with the principles of Moore's Law. This predictability of camera prices was first presented in 1998 at the Australian PMA DIMA conference by Barry Hendy and since referred to as "Hendy's Law".
Since only a few aspect ratios are commonly used (mainly 4:3 and 3:2), the number of sensor sizes that are useful is limited. Furthermore, sensor manufacturers do not produce every possible sensor size, but take incremental steps in sizes. For example, in 2007 the three largest sensors (in terms of pixel count) used by Canon were the 21.1, 17.9, and 16.6 megapixel CMOS sensors.
The Joint Photography Experts Group standard (JPEG) is the most common file format for storing image data. Other file types include Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) and various Raw image formats.
Many cameras, especially professional or DSLR cameras, support a Raw image format. A raw image is the unprocessed set of pixel data directly from the camera's sensor. They are often saved in formats proprietary to each manufacturer, such as NEF for Nikon, CRW or CR2 for Canon, and MRW for Minolta. Adobe Systems has released the DNG format, a royalty free raw image format which has been adopted by at least 10 camera manufacturers.
Raw files initially had to be processed in specialized image editing programs, but over time many mainstream editing programs, such as Google's Picasa, have added support for raw images. Editing raw format images allows more flexibility in settings such as white balance, exposure compensation, color temperature, and so on. In essence raw format allows the photographer to make major adjustments without losing image quality that would otherwise require retaking the picture.
Formats for movies are AVI, DV, MPEG, MOV (often containing motion JPEG), WMV, and ASF (basically the same as WMV). Recent formats include MP4, which is based on the QuickTime format and uses newer compression algorithms to allow longer recording times in the same space.
Other formats that are used in cameras but not for pictures are the Design Rule for Camera Format (DCF), an ISO specification for the camera's internal file structure and naming, and Digital Print Order Format (DPOF), which dictates what order images are to be printed in and how many copies.
Most cameras include Exif data that provides metadata about the picture. Exif data may include aperture, exposure time, focal length, date and time taken, and location.
