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Free The Digital Camera Technology Essay Sample

A world without photography is unimaginable. This is because it is a world that lacks all the essential items such as the ID’s, or portraits, souvenirs, celebrity pictures, x-ray photographs, as well as advertising pictures. This shows that photographs are such essential items that are required by the social world in which we live today. Increased globalization, as well as the use of new technologies has resulted into increased need for people to use images and photographs to create meaning into their social lives. The world of photography has advanced from the analogue technology into the digital technology. In this case, the digital cameras have been developed and have brought about new concepts concerning photos; they have additionally increased the value of social lives that people live today. It is important to note that almost all the social events that man is involved in, deal with the concept of photography that cannot be left out. This is regardless of the purpose and nature of the event. Photography is employed in parties, ceremonies, rallies, campaigns, media industry and other events. This paper considers looking at the new technology, ‘digital camera technology’ that was developed and has spread among people. This technology will be analyzed in terms of how the social forces have pushed its development, as well as how the technology has influenced the social patterns of people.

This technology is said to have advanced from the same technology that was responsible for creation of television images. This was after the year 1951 when the first video tape recorder was able to capture the images through converting the information they had into electric impulses (digital) and transferring these impulses onto a magnetic tape. This development was followed by the 1960’s NASA project that changed using the analogue technology to using the digital technology and gave the opportunity to send the images from the Moon back on the Earth.

Other research studies and inventions were carried out, and on the17 th of April, 1994, there was a breakthrough in the manufacture of digital camera’s destined for the consumer markets. The digital cameras that were released worked well with the home computer at the time. The first type of camera to be released for the consumer market was the ‘ Apple Quick Take 100 camera’ , which was released on 17 th Feb, 1994, and was followed by the ‘ Kodak DC40 camera’ which was released on 28 th Feb, 1995, then other companies also joined in by manufacturing other kinds of digital cameras for the market.

The Digital Camera Technology

This technology involves the development of camera that doesn’t use a film. Instead, the camera works as a computer accessory; however the basic principles of operation are the same as those of the analogue camera. The difference with this technology is that the camera doesn’t have the mechanical moving parts; instead the camera has been featured with an LCD screen which displays the photo or the scenery that the camera has focused on. This technology is more flexible than the analogue one since if the photographer doesn’t like the photo that is taken, then the photo is deleted. The camera has no film therefore doesn’t require the process of developing the photo.

The working of this camera is quite explicit. This is because when one takes a photograph the aperture opens and the light gets into the camera and goes through a series of lenses before falling onto the CCD. When it arrives at the CCD, a charge is generated proportionally to the amount of light that moves into the camera. This is converted into a signal which is converted from analogue to digital. The data which is in digital form is kept in an ‘on-board memory’, and then it’s changed by the computer chip to be of the JPEG format.

Contemporary Social Uses of Digital Camera in Today’s World

The social world we live in today has employed photography as a core aspect of its social life. It is against this fact that the digital camera technology has been embraced in almost all other areas of life. It is indeed true that the uses of ‘digital camera’ have kept increasing from one generation to another. This is because of the new social demands, as well as the changing social patterns of people’s lives that the digital camera has found new uses with time.

The first use of the digital camera of course is to capture digital images that can be converted into still images which can be stored to keep history. In this regard, the digital camera is used as a gadget by which the images of functions such as occasions, meetings, parties, weddings, and rallies among others may be captured and be stored to keep the history. In this regard, the introduction and commercialization of the sale of digital cameras have played a critical role in making the digital camera a strong avenue by which the users can capture images and practice photography.

Secondly, the digital camera technology has played a major role in the development and sustenance of the social media, and thus the social experiences of people with each other. In this case, the digital camera technology has led to the evolving of the social media cultures within the constraints of globalization. The introduction of the digital camera has expanded the social media services. In this case, today an increased number of people who have subscribed to the social media sites such as you tube, and Flicker use the digital images they have collected from their digital cameras. They are able to send the images to the social media sites, as well as receive images from these sites. In this regard, the digital cameras play an important role in data collection, and transfer from one site to the other.

Third, the digital camera technology has played a big role in increasing the ‘interactivity of people’ with each other, objects and their world. This is because the technology allows people from different places and with different experiences to exchange materials and experiences and thus interact. This is because the camera can be linked to the computer where the images are stored and exchanged. Increased number of the digital camera users, as well as the high numbers of subscribers to social sites such as Flicker where images are exchanged shows that the world has become much more interactive. The ability of the camera to take store and exchange images through the computer has contributed significantly to the interactive culture among the new generational people today.

Finally, the digital camera has played a huge role in today’s social world through promoting sharing of experiences, events, and incidences. Today, most of the large international media stations such as CNN have employed the use of digital cameras in capturing live events of incidences across the world. The journalists of these stations have the latest technologies of digital camera which allows them to focus on the happenings and events. This has made people across the world to be able to exchange information, learn new events, and cultures of other people across the globe. The digital camera technology has played a significant role with regard to the facilitation and storage of the images which are exchanged.

Possible Future Development

The journey with regard to the development of the digital technology, and the digital camera in specific has been long. However, the success of the digital camera and the positive impact this technology has had with regard to redefining the social patterns of life of the people today is remarkable. However, it should be noted that technology goes with time, and thus there is room for future development of this technology.

The possible future development of the digital camera may be considered in two forms. First, it may be through the improvements in the quality of images that would be picked in the days to come. I foresee a case where the ‘pixel’ technology would be improved so that it is not based on the camera that one purchases, but a standard digital camera will be made with a flexible provision by which different portable ‘pixels’ can be used. If this comes true in the future development of the digital camera, then the histories of the social world we live today will be well captured and stored for future use. In addition, it would improve the social cultures such as the interactions that users of social media sites such as Flicker and ‘you tube’ have with each other. In other words, it would create a world that is socially bound by the exchanges that people in various parts will have with each other.

The second likely future development that may take place with regards to the digital camera technology may involve linking the digital images that are taken across the world to one central cable. This technology if successful may be useful in improving global security, as well as making the globe a smaller village with regard to the exchange of information, across the societies and individuals with digital camera.

Social Context, Social Forces and Social Actors That Have Influenced the Development of Digital Camera

The development of the Digital camera has not come on its own; there have been social forces and actors that have played a pivotal role towards the success of the digital camera technology. As the world opens up, and there is increased social needs of people from various parts of the world to communicate, interact as well as share information; the demand for a media by which images would be captured and exchanged was necessary. In this case, there was need for the device that would allow the photographers to capture images and share them with people and this became a force that pushed for the development of the digital media.

The forces of globalization also played a critical role in the development of the digital camera technology. This is because the connection that various states had with each other developed the need for a much more interactive media by which the citizens of the countries could communicate. The success of the internet was a great invention; however people needed a technology that they could use to be able to exchange information and experiences through photography. These led to the development of the social media sites such as Flicker where people have the opportunity to share information through pictures. In this case, social media became an avenue that increased the use of photography.

The need for exchange of photos at household level was limited by the era of analogue camera where photography was much practiced by the professional cameras. The need for family members to have the opportunity to share information, as well as pictures and photos also was a great force that made many households to purchase the digital camera. The digital camera technology through the services such as ‘teleconferencing’ has enabled members of households living far from each other to share information, as well as visual images.

Increased socialization of people in the digital age also led to the increased need for data and information management. This could not be a success in the analogue setting. This made it necessary for the digital technology to be embraced for it can be easily programmed. Today, the digital camera images can be programmed and stored in specific formats, the images can be further edited with regard to the users' needs. Therefore, increased socialization of people from many communities led to the high demand for digital cameras and thus its success in the market.

The other social actor that influenced the development of the ‘digital camera technology’ was the pressure from ‘entertainment and advertising industries’. As the world moved to new technologies, the entertainment, as well as the advertising industries developed the demand for digital technology in order to capture the best shots of sceneries for entertainment purposes, and to capture the best photographs that could be used for the purposes of advertising. Indeed, there was a great need for digital technology in the entertainment industry in the areas of photography of events, live recording of entertainment programs, as well as the use of digital technology in allowing people who were far from other social events to access the events. This required the use of digital cameras which could arrest the photos, transfer them into electric signals that are fed onto the computer as jpeg and later transmitted live via the digital television.

Indeed, the development of ‘digital camera’ affected social groups, this is because digitization of the camera began mass popularization of photography. This was characterized by more the cameras becoming affordable allowing more people to access it. This changed the way the society viewed photography. More people could access the digital camera and thus the socio-economic levels of people did not affect one’s ability to participate in photography. The society had to respond to this change by interacting more with the photographs that were made accessible to them through digital technology. Photography also became friendlier as more and more people entered into the field.

Digitization was the beginning of the mass popularization of the photography; as photographs and cameras became more affordable, so people were able to access them which led to their wider distribution.

The other effect that came to the society through the digital camera technology was the introduction of a participatory culture. This is because the new spread of digital technology brought people closer as they interacted with each other through the images that were posted on social media sites such as Flicker. The society became more participatory as more people found time and opportunity to share information and interact through this kind of technology.

There has also been an increase in the number of social groups after the commercialization of digital camera. In this case, the commercialization of digital camera led to more people finding the social media sites that used digital photography technology as fit to them. This is because the photographs made the social sites more appealing to people. This is because the combination of digital photography and global network resulted to be very beneficial to the users in terms of improving the connectivity of people with each other.

All in all, the paper has clearly demonstrated that the introduction of the digital technology has greatly influenced the social world. The appearance of the digital technology has changed the social world in various aspects. The effect of the digital technology on the social world includes its contribution to the development of social media, the TV-media, and other forms of communications. It is clear that the digital camera technology has influenced the quality of people's life in various ways, as well as it has affected the behaviors among the social groups in the 21 st century.

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Essay on Camera

Students are often asked to write an essay on Camera in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Camera

Introduction.

A camera is a device that captures images. These images can be still photographs or moving images such as videos.

Types of Cameras

There are many types of cameras including digital, film, professional, and phone cameras. Each type has its unique features.

Uses of Cameras

Cameras are used in various fields such as journalism, filmmaking, science, and more. They also help us capture life’s precious moments.

In conclusion, cameras are an important tool in our lives. They allow us to document and share our experiences.

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250 Words Essay on Camera

The camera, a ubiquitous tool in today’s digital age, has revolutionized the way we perceive and capture the world around us. It has evolved from being a simple tool for documentation to a sophisticated device for artistic expression, communication, and data analysis.

The Evolution of the Camera

The camera’s journey began with the camera obscura, a simple optical device used in the Renaissance period. The invention of the daguerreotype in the 19th century marked the beginning of photography. The 20th century witnessed rapid advancements with the introduction of the Polaroid, enabling instant photography, and the digital camera, which eliminated the need for film.

The Camera in the Digital Age

Today, cameras are integrated into smartphones, drones, and even satellites, making photography accessible to all. They serve not just as tools for capturing memories, but also for communicating ideas and emotions. The rise of social media platforms has further amplified the role of the camera in our lives.

Cameras and Artificial Intelligence

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with cameras has opened up new avenues. AI-enabled cameras can recognize faces, detect objects, and even predict behavior, finding applications in fields like surveillance, healthcare, and autonomous vehicles.

The camera, from its humble beginnings to its current advanced state, has significantly impacted society. As technology continues to evolve, the camera’s role will continue to expand, making it a vital tool in our increasingly visual and interconnected world.

500 Words Essay on Camera

Introduction: the camera as a tool of expression and documentation.

The camera, a revolutionary invention in the world of technology, has drastically shaped the way we perceive, interpret, and document reality. It is a device that captures light in a physical medium, either on film or digitally, to produce an image. Invented in the early 19th century, the camera has evolved significantly over time, from large, cumbersome devices to compact, sophisticated gadgets that can fit into our pockets.

The camera’s journey began with the camera obscura, a device that projected an image onto a surface through a small hole. This concept was later refined and developed into the daguerreotype, the first publicly available photographic process. However, these early cameras were limited in their capabilities, requiring long exposure times and producing images that were not easily reproducible.

The introduction of the dry plate process in the 1870s, followed by the invention of roll film in the 1880s, marked a significant turning point in the camera’s evolution. These innovations made photography more accessible and portable, paving the way for the first mass-produced camera, the Kodak Brownie, in 1900.

Modern Cameras and Technological Advancements

The advent of the digital era in the late 20th century brought about another profound shift in camera technology. Digital cameras, which capture and store images electronically rather than on film, have become the standard in recent years. They offer numerous advantages over their analog predecessors, including instant image review, larger storage capacity, and the ability to manipulate images digitally.

Moreover, the integration of cameras into smartphones has democratized photography, allowing virtually anyone to capture and share images instantly. This ubiquity of cameras has had a profound impact on society, influencing everything from journalism and advertising to social media and personal communication.

The Impact of Cameras on Society

Cameras have not only revolutionized the way we capture and share images, but also how we interact with the world. They have become a tool of expression and a means of communication, enabling us to document our lives, explore our creativity, and share our perspectives with others.

In journalism, cameras have played a pivotal role in bringing distant events and issues to the forefront of public consciousness. They have also transformed advertising, with high-quality images becoming a key component of successful marketing campaigns.

On a personal level, cameras allow us to preserve memories and moments, documenting our lives in a way that was not possible before. They have also become a key tool in the rise of social media, enabling users to share their experiences and perspectives with a global audience.

Conclusion: The Camera’s Role in the Future

As technology continues to advance, cameras will undoubtedly continue to evolve, offering ever greater capabilities and possibilities. Virtual reality cameras, 360-degree cameras, and advanced drone cameras are just a few examples of the exciting developments on the horizon.

Despite these technological advancements, the essence of the camera remains the same: it is a tool that allows us to capture, interpret, and share our view of the world. As such, it will continue to play a crucial role in our society, influencing how we communicate, express ourselves, and understand the world around us.

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Digital cameras

by Chris Woodford . Last updated: March 6, 2022.

D igital cameras give a whole new meaning to the idea of painting by numbers. Unlike old-style film cameras , they capture and record images of the world around us using digital technology. In other words, they store photographs not as patterns of darkness and light but as long strings of numbers. This has many advantages: it gives us instant photographs, allows us to edit our pictures, and makes it easier for us to share photographs using cell phones (mobile phones), e-mail, and web sites .

Photo: A typical low-cost digital camera. The circle is the lens; the rectangle above it is a xenon flash lamp . You can see what this camera looks like inside in the photo lower down this page.

How ordinary film cameras work

If you have an old-style camera, you'll know that it's useless without one vital piece of equipment: a film . A film is a long spool of flexible plastic coated with special chemicals (based on compounds of silver) that are sensitive to light. To stop light spoiling the film, it is wrapped up inside a tough, light-proof plastic cylinder—the thing you put in your camera.

Photo: An old-style film camera from the late 1980s. The film loads in a spool on the right and winds across to another spool on the left, passing in front of the lens on the way. When you take a photo, the shutter lets light enter from the lens and expose the film. It's all very 19th-century compared to digital photography!

When you want to take a photograph with a film camera, you have to press a button. This operates a mechanism called the shutter, which makes a hole (the aperture) open briefly at the front of the camera, allowing light to enter through the lens (a thick piece of glass or plastic mounted on the front). The light causes reactions to take place in the chemicals on the film, thus storing the picture in front of you.

This isn't quite the end of the process, however. When the film is full, you have to take it to a drugstore (chemist's) to have it developed. Usually, this involves placing the film into a huge automated developing machine. The machine opens up the film container, pulls out the film, and dips it in various other chemicals to make your photos appear. This process turns the film into a series of "negative" pictures—ghostly reverse versions of what you actually saw. In a negative, the black areas look light and vice-versa and all the colors look weird too because the negative stores them as their opposites. Once the machine has made the negatives, it uses them to make prints (finished versions) of your photos.

If you want to take only one or two photographs, all of this can be a bit of a nuisance. Most people have found themselves wasting photographs simply to "finish off the film." Often, you have to wait several days for your film to be developed and your prints (the finished photographs) returned to you. It's no wonder that digital photography has become very popular—because it solves all these problems at a stroke.

How digital cameras work

Photo: A typical image sensor. The green rectangle in the center (about the size of a fingernail) is the light-sensitive part; the gold wires coming off it connect it into the camera circuit.

Digital cameras look very much like ordinary film cameras but they work in a completely different way. When you press the button to take a photograph with a digital camera, an aperture opens at the front of the camera and light streams in through the lens. So far, it's just the same as a film camera. From this point on, however, everything is different. There is no film in a digital camera. Instead, there is a piece of electronic equipment that captures the incoming light rays and turns them into electrical signals. This light detector is one of two types, either a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a CMOS image sensor .

If you've ever looked at a television screen close up, you will have noticed that the picture is made up of millions of tiny colored dots or squares called pixels . Laptop LCD computer screens also make up their images using pixels, although they are often much too small to see. In a television or computer screen, electronic equipment switches all these colored pixels on and off very quickly. Light from the screen travels out to your eyes and your brain is fooled into see a large, moving picture.

In a digital camera, exactly the opposite happens. Light from the thing you are photographing zooms into the camera lens. This incoming "picture" hits the image sensor chip, which breaks it up into millions of pixels. The sensor measures the color and brightness of each pixel and stores it as a number. Your digital photograph is effectively an enormously long string of numbers describing the exact details of each pixel it contains. You can read more about how an image sensor produces a digital picture in our article on webcams .

How digital cameras use digital technology

Once a picture is stored in numeric form, you can do all kinds of things with it. Plug your digital camera into your computer, and you can download the images you've taken and load them into programs like PhotoShop to edit them or jazz them up. Or you can upload them onto websites, email them to friends, and so on. This is possible because your photographs are stored in digital format and all kinds of other digital gadgets—everything from MP3-playing iPods to cellphones and computers to photo printers—use digital technology too. Digital is a kind of language that all electronic gadgets "speak" today.

Photo: Digital cameras are much more convenient than film cameras. You can instantly see how the picture will look from the LCD screen on the back. If your picture doesn't turn out okay, you can simply delete it and try again. You can't do that with a film camera. Digital cameras mean photographers can be more creative and experimental.

If you open up a digital photograph in a paint (image editing) program, you can change it in all kinds of ways. A program like this works by adjusting the numbers that represent each pixel of the image. So, if you click on a control that makes the image 20 percent brighter, the program goes through all the numbers for each pixel in turn and increases them by 20 percent. If you mirror an image (flip it horizontally), the program reverses the sequence of the numbers it stores so they run in the opposite direction. What you see on the screen is the image changing as you edit or manipulate it. But what you don't see is the paint program changing all the numbers in the background.

Some of these image-editing techniques are built into more sophisticated digital cameras. You might have a camera that has an optical zoom and a digital zoom. An optical zoom means that the lens moves in and out to make the incoming image bigger or smaller when it hits the CCD. A digital zoom means that the microchip inside the camera blows up the incoming image without actually moving the lens. So, just like moving closer to a TV set, the image degrades in quality. In short, optical zooms make images bigger and just as clear, but digital zooms make images bigger and more blurred.

Why digital cameras compress images

Imagine for a moment that you're a CCD or CMOS image sensing chip. Look out of a window and try to figure out how you would store details of the view you can see. First, you'd have to divide the image into a grid of squares. So you'd need to draw an imaginary grid on top of the window. Next, you'd have to measure the color and brightness of each pixel in the grid. Finally, you'd have to write all these measurements down as numbers. If you measured the color and brightness for six million pixels and wrote both down both things as numbers, you'd end up with a string of millions of numbers—just to store one photograph! This is why high-quality digital images often make enormous files on your computer. Each one can be several megabytes (millions of characters) in size.

To get around this, digital cameras, computers, and other digital gadgets use a technique called compression . Compression is a mathematical trick that involves squeezing digital photos so they can be stored with fewer numbers and less memory. One popular form of compression is called JPG (pronounced J-PEG, which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, after the scientists and mathematicians who thought up the idea). JPG is known as a "lossy" compression because, when photographs are squeezed this way, some information is lost and can never be restored. High-resolution JPGs use lots of memory space and look very clear; low resolution JPGs use much less space and look more blurred. You can find out more about compression in our article on MP3 players .

Most digital cameras have settings that let you take pictures at higher or lower resolutions. If you select high-resolution, the camera can store fewer images on its memory card —but they are much better quality. Opt for low-resolution and you will get more images, but the quality won't be as good. Low-resolution images are stored with greater compression.

Turning ordinary photos into digital photos

There is a way to turn photos from an ordinary film camera into digital photos—by scanning them. A scanner is a piece of computer equipment that looks like a small photocopier but works like a digital camera. When you put your photos in a scanner, a light scans across them, turning them into strings of pixels and thus into digital images you can see on your computer.

Inside a digital camera

Ever wondered what's inside a digital camera? What takes the photo? Where's it stored? What makes the flash work? And how do all these bits connect together? When you take electronic gadgets apart, they're much harder to understand than ordinary machines (things that work through a clear physical mechanism): you can't always see which part does which job or how. Even so, it can be quite illuminating to peer into your favorite gadgets to see what's hiding inside. I don't recommend you try this at home: opening things up is the quickest way to invalidate your warranty; it's also a good way to ensure they'll never work again!

The main parts of a digital camera

Photo: The parts in a basic digital camera. Were it not for the LCD screen and batteries (the two biggest components), you could probably make a camera like this as small as a postage stamp!

Battery compartment : This camera takes two 1.5-volt batteries , so it runs on a total voltage of 3 volts (3 V).
Flash capacitor : The capacitor charges up for several seconds to store enough energy to fire the flash.
Flash lamp : Operated by the capacitor. It takes a fair bit of energy to fire a xenon flash like this, which is why a lot of indoor flash photography quickly uses up your batteries.
LED : A small red LED (light-emitting diode) indicates when the self-timer is operating, so you can take photos of yourself more easily.
Lens : The lens catches light from the object you're photographing and focuses it on the CCD.
Focusing mechanism : This camera has a simple switch-operated focus that toggles the lens between two positions for taking either close-ups or distant shots.
Image sensor : This is the light-detecting microchip in a digital camera and it uses either CCD or CMOS technology. You can't actually see the chip in this photo, because it's directly underneath the lens. But you can see what it looks like in our article on webcams .
USB connector : Attach a USB cable here and connect it to your computer to download the photos you've taken. To your computer, your camera looks like just another memory device (like a hard drive ).
SD (secure digital) card slot : You can slide a flash memory card in here for storing more photos. The camera has a very small internal memory that will store photos too.
Processor chip : The camera's main digital "brain". This controls all the camera's functions. It's an example of an integrated circuit .
Wrist connector : The strap that keeps the camera securely tied to your wrist attaches here.
Top case : Simply screws on top of the bottom case shown here.

What are "mirrorless" cameras?

How do digital cameras compare with smartphone cameras from what i've said so far, you can see that digital cameras are great things—if you're comparing them to old-style film cameras, that is. thanks to their superb, cutting-edge image sensors, there's really no good reason (other than a nostalgic preference for analog technology) to use film. you might be forgiven for thinking sales of digital cameras would be rocketing as a result, but you'd be wrong. over the last few years, digital cameras have seen double-digit falls in sales in parallel with the massive rise of smartphones and tablets (which now sell more than 1.5 billion each year ). check out a photo-sharing site like flickr and you'll find the most popular "cameras" are actually phones: in march 2022, at the time i'm updating this article, flickr's top five cameras are all iphones. is there a good reason to own a standalone digital camera anymore or can you now do everything with a camera phone photo: the pros and cons of digital cameras and smartphones summarized in three photos. even point-and-shoot digital cameras like my old canon ixus have bigger, better, telescopic lenses (top) and sensors compared to the ones in the best smartphone cameras, like my new lg (middle). but smartphones undoubtedly score on connectivity and they have bigger, better, and clearer screens (bottom). here you can see my smartphone's huge screen pictured in a preview photo on the canon's tiny screen. sensors and screens step back a decade and there was no comparison at all between the rough and clunky snapshot cameras on cellphones and even the most mediocre compact digital cameras. while the digitals were boasting ever-increasing numbers of megapixels, cellphones took crude snaps little better than the ones you could get from a basic webcam (1 megapixel or less was common). now all that's changed. the 10-year-old canon ixus/powershot digital camera i use routinely is rated at 7.1 megapixels, which is perfectly fine for almost anything i ever want to do. my new lg smartphone comes in at 13 megapixels, which (theoretically, at least) sounds like it must be twice as good. but wait "megapixels" are a misleading marketing ploy: what really matters is the size and quality of the image sensors themselves. generally, the bigger the sensor, the better the pictures. comparing the raw technical data, the canon ixus claims a 1/2.5" ccd while the lg has a 1/3.06" cmos (a newer, somewhat different type of sensor chip ). what do those numbers actually mean sensor measurements are based on needlessly confusing math that i'm not going to explain here, and you'll have take it on trust that both of these cameras have tiny sensors, about half the size of a pinkie nail (measuring less than 5mm in each direction), though the canon sensor is significantly bigger. the digital ixus, though eight years older than the lg smartphone, and with apparently half as many "megapixels," has a significantly bigger sensor chip and one that's likely to outperform the lg, especially in lower light conditions. the canon also scores with a much better, telescopic lens (technically rated 5.8–17.4 mm, which is equivalent to 35–105mm)—better quality and telescopic to boot—that can take everything from infinity-distance landscapes to close-up macro shots of spiders and flies. but i have to upload my photos to a computer to get a sense of how good or bad they are because the canon only has a tiny 6cm (2.5-inch) lcd screen. the lg is over twice as good on the diagonal screen dimension, with a 14cm (5.5 inch) "monitor." where canon estimates that the ixus screen has 230,000 pixels, the lg boasts quad hd (2560×1440 pixels), or roughly sixteen times more. i might not be able to take better photos with the lg, but at least i can instantly assess and appreciate them on a screen as good as an hd tv (albeit still pocket-sized). bear in mind that my canon is just a point-and-shoot compact, so this is not really a fair comparison between what you can achieve with a really good digital camera and a really good smartphone. my lg is right up at the better end of smartphone cameras, but the ixus isn't anywhere near as good as the best digital cameras. a professional dslr would have a much bigger sensor than a smartphone—up to 3.6cm × 2.4cm—so it would be able to capture really fine detail in even the lowest of light levels. it would also have a bigger and better screen and better (interchangeable) lenses. photo: this is a closeup of the camera inside the lg (with its cover popped off). what you're looking at here is the lens: the image sensor chip is directly underneath it. (in case it's not clear, the red thing is a pen i'm pointing with.) social media of course, where smartphone cameras really score is in the "smartphone" department: they're computers, in essence, that are pop-in-the-pocket portable and always online. so not only are you more likely to capture chance photos (because you're always carrying a camera), but you can instantly upload your snaps to the aptly-named instagram, facebook, or twitter. and that's the real reason why smartphone cameras have surpassed old-school digitals: photography itself has changed from the digital-equivalent of the 19th-century daguerreotype (itself a throwback to the portrait paintings of old) to something more off-the-cuff, immediate, and, of course, social . for the purposes of facebook or twitter, often viewed on small-screen mobile devices, you don't need more than a couple of megapixels, at most. (prove it yourself by downloading a hi-res image from instagram or flickr, and you'll find it's seldom more than a couple of hundred kilobytes in size and 1000 megapixels or less in each dimension, making less than one megapixel in total.) even on better photo-sharing websites like instagram and flickr, most people will never be browsing your photos in multi-megapixel dimensions: they simply wouldn't fit on the screen. so even if your smartphone doesn't have masses of megapixels, it doesn't really matter: most people flicking through your photos on their smartphones won't notice—or care. social media means never having to say you're sorry you forgot your dslr and only had your iphone smartphone add-ons now it's absolutely the case that photos taken with a top-notch canon or nikon dslr will beat, hands down, snapshots from even the best smartphones—but that's often because it's not a like-for-like comparison. often, we're comparing good amateur photos taken with smartphones to brilliant professional photos taken with dslrs. how much of what we're seeing is the camera... and how much the eye of the photographer sometimes it's hard to separate the two things professionals can achieve amazing results with smartphones—but so can amateurs, with a bit of extra help. one of the drawbacks of smartphone cameras is the lack of manual control (generally even less than with a basic compact digital camera). you can get around that, to a certain extent, by using add-on apps that give you much more control over fiddly, old-school settings like iso, aperture, shutter speed, and white balance. (search your favorite app store for keywords like "professional photography" or "manual photography".) you can also add snap-on lenses to smartphones to get around the drawbacks of a fixed-focal-length lens (though there's nothing you can do about the tiny, poorer-quality image sensor). once your photos are safely snapped, there are plenty of photo-editing apps for smartphones as well, including a slimmed-down, free version of photoshop, which can help you retouch your amateur "sow's ears" into professional "silk purses." so why still buy digital since many people now own a smartphone, the real question is whether you need a digital camera as well. it's very hard to see an argument for point-and-shoot compacts anymore: for social-media snaps, most of us can get by with our phones. for this website, i take a lot of macro photos—close-ups of circuits and mechanical parts—with my ixus that i couldn't possibly capture with the lg, so i won't be jumping ship anytime soon. if you want to take professional quality photos, there's really no comparison between smartphones and dslrs. a top-notch dslr has a better-quality image sensor (up to 50 times bigger in area than the one in a smartphone) and a much better lens: these two fundamentally important things make the "raw" image from a dslr far better. add in all those fiddly manual controls you have on a dslr and you'll be able to capture a far greater range of photos across a far wider range of lighting conditions. if you really care about the quality of your photos, instant-uploading to sharing sites might be a less important consideration: you'll want to view your photos on a big monitor, retouch them, and only share them when you're happy. having said that, you can now buy hybrid digital cameras with built-in wi-fi that offer similar instant-sharing convenience to smartphones. and, of course, there's nothing to stop you carrying a smartphone and a dslr if you really want the best of both worlds a brief history of photography.

Artwork: The original digital camera, invented in the 1970s by Steven Sasson, worked a bit like an old-style camcorder and needed a separate playback monitor. First (top), you took your photos with the camera (blue), which used a CCD to record them onto a magnetic tape (red). Later (bottom), when you got back home, you took out the tape, inserted it into a computer (orange), and viewed the pictures you'd taken on a computer monitor or TV (green). Artwork from US Patent 4,131,919: Electronic still camera by Gareth A. Lloyd, Steven J. Sasson courtesy of US Patent & Trademark Office.

4th century BCE: Chinese invented the camera obscura (a darkened room with a hole in the drapes that projects an image of the outside world onto a distant wall).
Late 1700s: Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805) and Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), two English scientists, carried out early experiments trying to record images on light-sensitive paper. Their photos were not permanent: they turned black unless permanently stored in a dark place.
1827: French Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833) made the world's first photographs. His method was no good for taking portraits of people because the camera shutter had to be left open for eight hours.
1839: French opera-house scene painter Louis Daguerre (1787–1851) announced the invention of photos on silver plates that became known as daguerreotypes.
1839: William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) invented the photographic negative process.
1851: British artist and photographer Frederick Scott Archer (1813–1857) invented a way of taking pin-sharp photos onto wet glass plates.
1870s: British physician Dr Richard Maddox (1816–1902) developed a way of taking photos using dry plates and gelatin.
1883: American inventor George Eastman (1854–1932) invented the modern photographic film.
1888: George Eastman launched his easy-to-use Kodak camera. His slogan was: "You push the button and we do the rest."
1947: Edwin Land (1909–1991) invented the instant polaroid camera.
1963: Edwin Land invented the color polaroid camera.
1975: US electrical engineer Steven Sasson invented the first CCD-based electronic camera with Gareth Lloyd at Eastman Kodak.
1990s: Digital cameras started to become popular, gradually making film cameras obsolete.
1999: Kyocera launched the VP-210 , the first smartphone with a built-in (front-facing) digital camera.
2000s: More advanced cellphones with built-in digital cameras began to make standalone digital cameras redundant for everyday snapshot photography.
2007: Samsung announced the B710, the first smartphone with two 1.3-megapixel digital cameras (for taking 3D photos).
2019: Phone makers such as Samsung and Nokia begin releasing phones with as many as seven cameras, offering multiple lenses for every possible photo opportunity!

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Computer graphics
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The Smart Phone Photography Guide: Shoot, Edit, Experiment, Share by Peter Cope. Welbeck, 2021. From selfies to VR, this book has lots of tips for getting the most from your smartphone camera.
Digital Photography For Dummies by Julie King. John Wiley, 2016. An illustrated, basic introduction.
Digital Photographer's Handbook by Tom Ang. Dorling Kindersley, 2016. A good, basic introduction to digital techniques, but experienced photographers may find it too simplistic. Presented in the very visual DK style.
Photographing Interesting People in Your Community: A Guide to Taking Portraits by Kate Plows, Donna Schou and Natalie Proulx. The New York Times, 4 January 2022. How to use your smartphone camera to tell a person's (visual) story.
Mirrorless cameras: Photography's new decisive moment by Leo Kelion. BBC News, 26 September 2018. How bigger sensors and mirrorless cameras are rekindling interest in digital cameras.
Smartphone Photography Evolves With Camera Apps and Related Tools by Kit Eaton. The New York Times, 1 October 2014. New camera apps are helping smartphones to simulate the kind of advanced controls previously found only on sophisticated digital SLRs. In Say, Can You Make Phone Calls on That Camera? (The New York Times, 16 November 2011), Nick Bilton looks at snap-on lenses and other attachments for extending the range of pictures you can take with your phone.
The death of photography: are camera phones destroying an artform? by Stuart Jeffries. The Guardian, 13 December 2013. Is the sheer quantity of photos we're now taking spoiling their quality—and the quality of the moments we're recording?
Post-process: why the smartphone camera changed photography forever by James Bareham. The Verge, 20 June 2013. A professional photographer explains how smartphones helped him fall back in love with photography—and why cameras no longer matter.
US Patent 4,131,919: Electronic still camera by Gareth A. Lloyd, Steven J. Sasson, Eastman Kodak Company, December 26, 1978. The very first CCD-based digital camera, patented by Kodak back in the 1970s.

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Digital Cameras vs. Film Cameras in Photographing Essay

Introduction.

The imaging and photographing domains have been facing tremendous developments in the ensuing milieu characterised by cutting edge innovations in information technology and media. The old adage that necessity is the mother of all invention aptly applies to what has become of contemporary technology. The film camera has enjoyed its protracted years of limelight in the billion dollar filming and entertainment industries as well as in other motion pictures realms. Modern technology in IT and media fronts has seen the introduction and the growing popularity of the digital camera as a unit product and as a plug-in in various mobile technological units such as cell phones.

Film and digital cameras are expansively dissimilar media devises. Although the two are used for similar purposes, the two models’ functionalities are completely unrelatable to each other. One major aspect in which the two media devised can be differentiated is the matter of controls and output quality. For the digital Camera unlike in the film model, controls manipulated off default settings will yield superb tonal quality. This must however be complemented by an appropriate adherence to the particulate processing steps. Graphic professional Segura Francisco (2008) notes that using film camera will demand more work and well skilled and experienced photographers normally get better results on film in cases where the requisite photographing steps from shot to print are completed meticulously. “This is the reason why many photographing novices prefer using digital cameras to ensure getting better results weathering the challenges posed by using film camera for beginners” (Segura, Francisco 2008). Needless; to say unlike film cameras digital cameras have fewer aspects and variables to control.

Graphic and photography scholars Ashihara, K. et al (2005) note that one major difference that exists between the two media and photographing technological components, film and digital cameras; is based on that film cameras will depend on the human eye judgment in the processing of the negatives which often leads to the generation of poor quality results. “As such many photographers prefer the consistency that comes with digital technology.” (Ashihara, K. et al 2005) The scholars underscore that this is despite the fact that film cameras offer great results when much expertise and acumen are applied right through the photographing up to the processing stages of a capturing exercise. They note that this is the reason why many photographers go the slide transparency filming route in the sense that the printer can detect the intended output impressions. (Ashihara, K. et al 2005)

The popularity of the film camera has survived the surge of the popularity of the digital Camera that gripped photographers and publishers particularly in the post 1999 milieu. The growing popularity of the digital model ha snot dislodged the use of the film camera in domains where it excels. This ahs been evidenced by the continued use of the film camera in various serious image capturing contexts. Photography Scholars Borwick, J. et al (1994) note that huge format film camera is still popularly used or serious landscape photography while the digital counterpart is common for fun shots also factoring in its convenience attribute. The film camera is recommended for its optimality in the manner in which it handles and renders the photographing highlights. According to Borwick, J. et al (1994) film camera overloads smoothly when highlights get too light or in case where there are wash outs. The analysts observe that the film model mimics the human eye far better than does the digital model. “The weak point of the digital models is that highlights abruptly clip and appear horrible as soon as there get to white colour impression.” (Borwick J. et al 1994) Unlike in film photographic processing digital camera does not offer any graceful overload to white impressions. Croll, M. (2001) notes that digital cameras’ characteristic curve shoots straight to 255 white and just collapses into the wall.

In comparing the two models; film and digital camera, it is worthy mention that for the film camera especially those of larger photography design; film cameras have a formidable resolution. This is essential since print size increase to wall proportions yet is it invisible in 5 x 7prints. (Opcit) Despite the notable characteristic of either of the two photographing models none of them can be said to be better that the other in absolute terms. The selection of any model would depend on the application scenario and attributes where a photographer intends to shoot. What some times nullifies the logic in debating on which of the two is better of the two basing on output is that; for instance the artist (in production processes) has the influence over output. As such arguing from the base on output to evaluate the two photography models can not be the best thing to do considering that in some cases optimality of output depends on the artist and not necessarily on the model of the medium.

Croll, M. (2001) presents that the debate normally culminates from the premise of levels of competence stating that those who are not adequately skilled to manipulate the film camera for obtaining optimum results often dash to the other end and argue for the digital. “Yet for one photographer who has mastered the arty of obtaining every last drop from the film’s camera model, which is in large format film; the film camera is technically better than digital in every way” (Croll, M. 2001) The scholar has underscored that many exponents of the film camera model argue against the film model largely due to the fact that they are not competent enough to manipulate it to obtain optimal filming and photographing results.

In summation it can be stated that both models have great results in cases where the devises attributes and controls as well as variables are skillfully manipulated during the photographing and image processing stages to get desired results. The digital has proved put to be more convenient for reasons entailing portability whilst the model also provides great quality much needed and tailored for photojournalism as well as fun portraits. On the other end optimum results can also be obtained through film model in jobs that require large prints. Film is particularly essential in reproduction process where textures in nature as well as landscapes are critically important.

Many photographing activities have made use of the two models considering the merits of each of the two models in different aspects of photography. Film and digital cameras devises thus can be said to accomplish different aspects better whilst from another perspective the two model functionalities and attributes can complement each other. Croll, M. (2001) cites that one model will diminish where the other excels. He states that the war like pitting of the two photographing and medium devises is just an editorialising gimmick to up magazine and news/reviews publications sales. This is well highlighted by the fact that film usage has already diminished in professional newspaper in the two years or so despite the fact that the model is still used in entities that for mainly financial reasons have not switched to the digital era.

”Equally; note that there has been no digital camera that has come close to dislodging the popularity of “8X10” huge format film model for large exhibition print outputs which require hellacious detailing” (Croll, M. 2001)

Ashihara, K. et al, Detection threshold for distortions due to jitter on digital audio, Oak Press, NYK, 2005
Borwick, J. et al,The Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook, Floyd Toole, Focal Press, 1994.
Croll, M, “Pulse Code Modulation for High Quality Sound Distribution: Quantizing Distortion at Very Low Signal Levels”, Research Department Report No, Millennium Press, US, 2001
Segura, Francisco, ” The Difference Between Digital Camera And Film Camera “. 2008. EzineArticles.com .
Chicago (A-D)
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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Digital Cameras vs. Film Cameras in Photographing." October 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/digital-cameras-vs-film-cameras-in-photographing/.

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The Role Of Camera In Photography

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