by: Drew Laughlin
Digital cameras are basically the same as film cameras in their handling.
They both have a lens to focus the specific image, a shutter to let light
inside the camera, and an aperture to control the amount of light which
enters the camera.
The differences between digital and traditional photography happen to be
after the light enters the camera. A traditional camera captures the
images on film, while a digital camera captures the image on an image
sensor.
Image sensors are electronic devices made up of an array of electrodes (or
photosites) which calculate light intensity. The most universally
recognized type of image sensor for digital cameras is the CCD
(Charge-Coupled Device) although others such as CMOS and Foveon are
sometimes used.
The number of photosites in the image sensor gives the digital camera its
megapixel (millions of pixels) rating. Each photosite corresponds to a
pixel in the final image, so a camera which is rated at six megapixels,
for example, has an image sensor which is 3008 pixels wide by 2000 pixels
high.
When light hits the image sensor it is converted into electrical signals
which are built-up and fed to an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter. The
A/D converter changes the electrical signal into binary numbers which are
processed by a computer housed in the camera body. Once the numbers have
been harvested the resulting image is stored on a memory card.
Photosites can only measure intensity of light -- not color. In order to
produce a colour image, each photosite must be covered with a colored
filter which can be red, blue, or green. These are the three primary
colors which can be combined to produce any other colour including white.
The colored filters are arranged in a grid so that there are twice as many
green filters as there are red or blue. This is because the human eye is
twice as sensitive to green light. Filters are arranged in a pattern
called the Bayer pattern - one row of red, green, red, green (etc.), and
the next row of blue, green, blue, green (etc).
Since each photosite can only be covered with one coloured filter,
computer processing is necessary to produce a full colored image. This is
done by analyzing a certain pixel and its immediate neighbors and
producing a composite colour from these calculations. For example, if a
bright red pixel is surrounded by bright green and bright blue pixels, the
bright red pixel must undeniably be white, because white is the
combination of red, blue, and green. This process is called demosaicing.
After demosaicing the image is adjusted according to the settings on your
camera. Most cameras have settings for brightness, contrast, and colour
saturation. After these adjustments are made some cameras may also apply a
sharpening algorithm to make the image clearer.
The final step before saving the image on the memory card is to compress
it. Most cameras use JPEG as a compression format. This reduces the size
of the file by eliminating excess data. This information cannot be
recovered, so JPEG is called a 'lossy' format.
Several cameras have the ability to save uncompressed images as TIFF files
or raw data. Raw data is the original photosite data even before
demosaicing. It can be transferred to a computer for processing with
special software that will perform all of the processing functions of the
camera but with much greater control.
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