Digital photography is the new medium of media making and storage in the world of today. The advent of personal computers augured the oncoming of the World Wide Web and the media boom that revolutionised visual arts and their resolution to the common man. With the new ‘toys’ of our age – digital cameras that take immensely clear and dazzling pictures of everything under the sun and more beyond! This phenomenon of digitalisation has come down from an expensive hobby to something that is found even in a child’s hand. With all these advancements, it is important to know what the basics of photography and its usages are.
The main “film” of digital cameras are their sensors. There are basically two types of sensors –
- The Charged Coupled Device (CCD), contained on a chip that gives high resolution and better quality pictures at the cost of running power and high noise levels when the light is not enough, resulting in grain. This technology is used in high end cameras where on board noise retouching is done to avoid a blurred picture.
- The Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) circuitry that uses photovoltaic changes to detect colour. It is used in low end cameras like cell phone cameras and web cameras because of its cheap design, low power consumption and high noise immunity at the expense of picture quality, size and density of colour.
The cameras themselves are adjudged by their Mega-pixel count. The Mega-pixel is a product of the pixel height and pixel width of the largest pictures these cameras can take. For example, if the largest picture a camera can take is of the dimension 1280px x 1024px, then its number of pixels would be 1280 * 1024 = 1310720 ~ 1.3 MP. This is how cameras are usually specified and bought by, but there are loads of other criteria.
The most easiest way of using digital cameras is by pointing and clicking. The processor inside the camera works in tandem with the image sensor and instantly gives the user a review of the photo they just shot. This method has worked out well for most consumers, but real photographers want complete control over their photograph. DSLR’s are the most advanced cameras of our generation that give the power-users a grand amount of tinkering power and brilliant pictures that are a testimony of the digital age. This is the power that comes with digitalising everything.