CAMERA

closing an aperture, behind which is located the film. To make the film
travel along its path and hold still for the exposure of each frame, a
device called a claw is required. This is another small piece of metal
that alternately pops into the sprocket holes or perforations in the film,
pulls the film down, retracts to release the film while the frame is being
exposed, and finally returns to the top of the channel in which it moves
to grasp the next frame. The movement of the shutter and claw are
synchronized, so that the shutter is closed while the claw is pulling the
frame downward and open for the instant that the frame is motionless
in its own channel or gate.
Lenses for movie cameras also come in “normal,” wide-angle, and long
focal lengths. Some older cameras had a turret on which were
mounted all three lens types. The desired lens could be fixed into
position by simply rotating the turret. Many super-8 cameras come with
a single zoom lens, incorporating a number of focal lengths that are
controlled by moving a certain group of lens elements toward or away
from the film. Most of these cameras have an automatic exposure
device that regulates the f-stop according to the reading made by a
built-in electric eye. Movie camera lenses are focused in the same way
as are still camera lenses. For viewing purposes, a super-8 uses a
beam splitter—a partially silvered reflector that diverts a small
percentage of the light to a ground-glass viewfinder while allowing
most of the light to reach the film. Other cameras have a mirror-shutter
system that transmits all the light, at intervals, alternately to film and
viewfinder. Many of the super-8 cameras also contain some kind of
rangefinder, built into the focusing screen, for precise focusing.

See also motion picture photography.

Development of the Camera

The original concept of the camera dates from Grecian times, when
Aristotle referred to the principle of the camera obscura [Lat.,=dark
chamber] which was literally a dark box—sometimes large enough for
the viewer to stand inside—with a small hole, or aperture, in one side.
(A lens was not employed for focusing until the Middle Ages.) An
inverted image of a scene was formed on an interior screen; it could
then be traced by an artist. The first diagram of a camera obscura
appeared in a manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci in 1519, but he did not
claim its invention.

The recording of a negative image on a light-sensitive

material was first achieved by the Frenchman Joseph
Nicéphore Niepce in 1826; he coated a piece of paper
with asphalt and exposed it inside the camera obscura
for eight hours. Although various kinds of devices for
making pictures in rapid succession had been employed
as early as the 1860s, the first practical motion picture
camera—made feasible by the invention of the first
flexible (paper base) films—was built in 1887 by E. J.
Marey, a Frenchman. Two years later Thomas Edison
invented the first commercially successful camera.
However, cinematography was not accessible to
amateurs until 1923, when Eastman Kodak produced
the first 16-mm reversal safety film, and Bell & Howell
introduced cameras and Compact digital cameras

Compact cameras are designed to be small and portable; the smallest

are described as subcompacts or "ultra-compacts". 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. They may have limited
motion picture capability. Compacts often have macro capability, but if
they have zoom capability the range is usually less than for bridge and
DSLR cameras. They have a greater depth of field, allowing objects
within a large range of distances from the camera to be in sharp focus.
They are particularly suitable for casual and "snapshot" use.

Bridge cameras

Main article: Bridge digital camera

Bridge or SLR-like cameras are higher-end digital cameras that

physically resemble DSLRs and share with them some advanced
features, but share with compacts the framing of the photo using live
preview and small sensor sizes.

Fujifilm FinePix S9000.

Bridge cameras often have superzoom lenses which provide a very

wide zoom range, typically between 10:1 and 18:1, which is attained at
the cost of some distortions, including barrel and pincushion distortion,
to a degree which varies with lens quality. These cameras are
sometimes marketed as and confused with digital SLR cameras since
the appearance is similar. Bridge cameras lack the mirror and reflex
system of DSLRs, have so far been fitted with fixed (non-
interchangeable) lenses (although in some cases accessory wide-angle
or telephoto converters can be attached to the lens), can usually take
movies with sound, and the scene is composed by viewing either the
liquid crystal display or the electronic viewfinder (EVF). They are
usually slower to operate than a true digital SLR, but they are capable
of very good image quality (with sufficient light) while being more
compact and lighter than DSLRs. The high-end models of this type
have comparable resolutions to low and mid-range DSLRs. Many of
these cameras can store images in lossless RAW format as an option to
JPEG compression. The majority have a built-in flash, often a unit which
flips up over the lens. The guide number tends to be between 11 and
15.

Digital single lens reflex cameras

Main article: Digital single-lens reflex cameras

Digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) are digital cameras based on

film single-lens reflex cameras (SLRs), both types are characterized by
the existence of a mirror and reflex system. See the main article on
DSLRs for a detailed treatment of this category.

Digital rangefinders

Main article: Rangefinder camera

A rangefinder is a user-operated optical mechanism to measure subject

distance once widely used on film cameras. Most digital cameras
measure subject distance automatically using acoustic or electronic
techniques, but it is not customary to say that they have a rangefinder.
The term rangefinder alone is sometimes used to mean a rangefinder
camera, that is, a film camera equipped with a rangefinder, as distinct
from an SLR or a simple camera with no way to measure distance.

Information on digital rangefinder cameras specifically is here.

Professional modular digital camera systems

This category includes very high end professional equipment that can
be assembled from modular components (winders, grips, lenses, etc.)
to suit particular purposes. Common brands include Hasselblad and
Mamiya. They were developed for medium or large format film sizes,
as these captured greater detail and could be enlarged more than 35
mm.

Typically these cameras are used in studios for commercial production;

being bulky and awkward to carry they are rarely used in action or
nature photography. They can often be converted into either film or
digital use by changing out the back part of the unit, hence the use of
terms such as a "digital back" or "film back". These cameras are very
expensive (up to $40,000) and are typically not used by consumers.

Line-scan camera systems

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 100MB 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 and optical character
recognition (OCR).

Conversion of film cameras to digital

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 the most part 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.

Many early professional SLR cameras, such as the NC2000 and the
Kodak DCS series, were developed from 35 mm film cameras. The
technology of the time, however, meant that rather than being a digital
"back" the body was mounted on a large and blocky digital unit, often
bigger than the camera portion itself. These were factory built
cameras, however, not aftermarket conversions.

A notable exception was a device called the EFS-1, which was

developed by Silicon Film from c. 1998–2001. It was intended to insert
into a film camera in the place of film, giving the camera a 1.3 MP
resolution and a capacity of 24 shots. Units were demonstrated, and in
2002 the company was developing the EFS-10, a 10 MP device that
was more a true digital back.

A few 35 mm cameras have had digital 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.
The largest in early 2006 is the Phase One's P45 39 MP imageback,
creating a single TIFF image of size up to 224.6 MB. Medium format
digitals 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.

History
Early development

The concept of digitizing images on scanners, and the concept of

digitizing video signals, predate the concept of making still pictures by
digitizing signals from an array of discrete sensor elements. Eugene F.
Lally of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory published the first description of
how to produce still photos in a digital domain using a mosaic
photosensor.[2] The purpose was to provide onboard navigation
information to astronauts during missions to planets. The mosaic array
periodically recorded still photos of star and planet locations during
transit and when approaching a planet provided additional
stadiametric information for orbiting and landing guidance. The
concept included camera design elements foreshadowing the first
digital camera.

Texas Instruments engineer Willis Adcock designed a filmless camera

and applied for a patent in 1972, but it is not known whether it was
ever built.[3] The first recorded attempt at building a digital camera was
in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak.[4] It used the
then-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips developed by Fairchild
Semiconductor in 1973.[5] The camera weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg),
recorded black and white images to a cassette tape, had a resolution
of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to capture its
first image in December 1975. The prototype camera was a technical
exercise, not intended for production.

Analog electronic cameras

Handheld electronic cameras, in the sense of a device meant to be

carried and used like a handheld film camera, appeared in 1981 with
the demonstration of the Sony Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera). This is
not to be confused with the later cameras by Sony that also bore the
Mavica name. This was an analog camera, in that it recorded pixel
signals continuously, as videotape machines did, without converting
them to discrete levels; it recorded television-like signals to a 2 × 2
inch "video floppy". In essence it was a video movie camera that
recorded single frames, 50 per disk in field mode and 25 per disk in
frame mode. The image quality was considered equal to that of then-
current televisions.

Analog cameras do not appear to have reached the market until 1986
with the Canon RC-701. Canon demonstrated a prototype of this model
at the 1984 Summer Olympics, printing the images in the Yomiuri
Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. In the United States, the first
publication to use these cameras for real reportage was USA Today, in
its coverage of World Series baseball. Several factors held back the
widespread adoption of analog cameras; the cost (upwards of
$20,000), poor image quality compared to film, and the lack of quality
affordable printers. Capturing and printing an image originally required
access to equipment such as a frame grabber, which was beyond the
reach of the average consumer. The "video floppy" disks later had
several reader devices available for viewing on a screen, but were
never standardized as a computer drive.

The early adopters tended to be in the news media, where the cost
was negated by the utility and the ability to transmit images by
telephone lines. The poor image quality was offset by the low
resolution of newspaper graphics. This capability to transmit images
without a satellite link was useful during the Tiananmen Square
protests of 1989 and the first Gulf War in 1991.

US government agencies also took a strong interest in the still video

concept, notably the US Navy for use as a real time air-to-sea
surveillance system.

The first analog camera marketed to consumers may have been the
Canon RC-250 Xapshot in 1988. A notable analog camera produced the
same year was the Nikon QV-1000C, designed as a press camera and
not offered for sale to general users, which sold only a few hundred
units. It recorded images in greyscale, and the quality in newspaper
print was equal to film cameras. In appearance it closely resembled a
modern digital single-lens reflex camera. Images were stored on video
floppy disks.

The arrival of true digital cameras

The first true digital camera that recorded images as a computerized

file was likely the Fuji DS-1P of 1988, which recorded to a 16 MB
internal memory card that used a battery to keep the data in memory.
This camera was never marketed in the United States, and has not
been confirmed to have shipped even in Japan.

The first commercially available digital camera was the 1990 Dycam
Model 1; it also sold as the Logitech Fotoman. It used a CCD image
sensor, stored pictures digitally, and connected directly to a PC or Mac
for download.[6][7][8]

In 1991, Kodak brought to market the Kodak DCS-100, the beginning of

a long line of professional SLR cameras by Kodak that were based in
part on film bodies, often Nikons. It used a 1.3 megapixel sensor and
was priced at $13,000.

The move to digital formats was helped by the formation of the first
JPEG and MPEG standards in 1988, which allowed image and video files
to be compressed for storage. The first consumer camera with a liquid
crystal display on the back was the Casio QV-10 in 1995, and the first
camera to use CompactFlash was the Kodak DC-25 in 1996.

The marketplace for consumer digital cameras was originally low

resolution (either analog or digital) cameras built for utility. In 1997 the
first megapixel cameras for consumers were marketed. The first
camera that offered the ability to record video clips may have been the
Ricoh RDC-1 in 1995.

1999 saw the introduction of the Nikon D1, a 2.74 megapixel camera
that was the first digital SLR developed entirely by a major
manufacturer, and at a cost of under $6,000 at introduction was
affordable by professional photographers and high end consumers.
This camera also used Nikon F-mount lenses, which meant film
photographers could use many of the same lenses they already owned.

Also in 1999, Minolta introduced the RD-3000 D-SLR at 2.7 megapixels.

This camera found many professional adherents. Limitations to the
system included the need to use Vectis lenses which were designed for
APS size film. The camera was sold with 5 lenses at various focal
lengths and ranges (zoom). Minolta did not produce another D-SLR
until September 2004 when they introduced the Alpha 7D (Alpha in
Japan, Maxxum in North America, Dynax in the rest of the world) but
using the Minolta A-mount system from its 35 mm line of cameras.

2003 saw the introduction of the Canon EOS 300D, also known as the
Digital Rebel, a 6 megapixel camera and the first DSLR priced under
$1,000, and marketed to consumers.

Image resolution
The resolution of a digital camera is often limited by the camera 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 is a misconception. There are several other
factors that impact a sensor's resolution. Some of these factors include
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). 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.

Australian recommended retail price of Kodak digital cameras.

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".[9]

Since only a few aspect ratios are commonly used (especially 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, 16.6,
and 12.8 megapixel CMOS sensors. The following is a table of sensors
commercially used in digital cameras.

projectors with which to use it. Systems using 8-mm film were
introduced in 1923; super-8, with its smaller sprocket holes and larger
frame size, appeared in 1965. A prototype of the the digital camera
was developed in 1975 by Eastman Kodak, but digital cameras were
not commercialized until the 1990s. Since then they have gradually
superseded many film-based cameras, both for consumers and
professionals, leading many manufacturers to eliminate or reduce the
number of the film cameras they produce.

Methods of image capture

At the heart of a digital camera is a CCD image sensor.

This digital camera is partly disassembled. The lens assembly (bottom

right) is partially removed, but the sensor (top right) still captures a
usable image, as seen on the LCD screen (bottom left).

Since the first digital backs were introduced, there have been three
main methods of capturing the image, each based on the hardware
configuration of the sensor and color filters.

The first method is often called single-shot, in reference to the number

of times the camera's sensor is exposed to the light passing through
the camera lens. Single-shot capture systems use either one CCD with
a Bayer filter mosaic, or three separate image sensors (one each for
the primary additive colors red, green, and blue) which are exposed to
the same image via a beam splitter.

The second method is referred to as multi-shot because the sensor is

exposed to the image in a sequence of three or more openings of the
lens aperture. There are several methods of application of the multi-
shot technique. The most common originally was to use a single image
sensor with three filters (once again red, green and blue) passed in
front of the sensor in sequence to obtain the additive color information.
Another multiple shot method utilized a single CCD with a Bayer filter
but actually moved the physical location of the sensor chip on the
focus plane of the lens to "stitch" together a higher resolution image
than the CCD would allow otherwise. A third version combined the two
methods without a Bayer filter on the chip.

The third method is called scanning because the sensor moves across
the focal plane much like the sensor of a desktop scanner. Their linear
or tri-linear sensors utilize only a single line of photosensors, or three
lines for the three colors. In some cases, scanning is accomplished by
rotating the whole camera; a digital rotating line camera offers images
of very high total resolution.

The choice of method for a given capture is determined largely by the

subject matter. It is usually inappropriate to attempt to capture a
subject that moves with anything but a single-shot system. However,
the higher color fidelity and larger file sizes and resolutions available
with multi-shot and scanning backs make them attractive for
commercial photographers working with stationary subjects and large-
format photographs.

Recently, dramatic improvements in single-shot cameras and RAW

image file processing have made single shot, CCD-based cameras
almost completely predominant in commercial photography, not to
mention digital photography as a whole. CMOS-based single shot
cameras are also somewhat common.

Filter mosaics, interpolation, and aliasing

The Bayer arrangement of color filters on the pixel array of an image

sensor.

In most current consumer digital cameras, a Bayer filter mosaic is

used, in combination with an optical anti-aliasing filter to reduce the
aliasing due to the reduced sampling of the different primary-color
images. A demosaicing algorithm is used to interpolate color
information to create a full array of RGB image data.
Cameras that use a beam-splitter single-shot 3CCD approach, three-
filter multi-shot approach, or Foveon X3 sensor do not use anti-aliasing
filters, nor demosaicing.

Firmware in the camera, or a software in a raw converter program such

as Adobe Camera Raw, interprets the raw data from the sensor to
obtain a full color image, because the RGB color model requires three
intensity values for each pixel: one each for the red, green, and blue
(other color models, when used, also require three or more values per
pixel). A single sensor element cannot simultaneously record these
three intensities, and so a color filter array (CFA) must be used to
selectively filter a particular color for each pixel.

The Bayer filter pattern is a repeating 2×2 mosaic pattern of light

filters, with green ones at opposite corners and red and blue in the
other two positions. The high proportion of green takes advantage of
properties of the human visual system, which determines brightness
mostly from green and is far more sensitive to brightness than to hue
or saturation. Sometimes a 4-color filter pattern is used, often involving
two different hues of green. This provides potentially more accurate
color, but requires a slightly more complicated interpolation process.

The color intensity values not captured for each pixel can be
interpolated (or guessed) from the values of adjacent pixels which
represent the color being calculated.

Connectivity
Many digital cameras can connect directly to a computer to transfer
data:

• Early cameras used the PC serial port. USB is now the most
widely used method (most cameras are viewable as USB mass
storage), though some have a FireWire port. Some cameras use
USB PTP mode for connection instead of USB MSC; some offer
both modes.

• Other cameras use wireless connections, via Bluetooth or IEEE

802.11 WiFi, such as the Kodak EasyShare One.

A common alternative is the use of a card reader which may be

capable of reading several types of storage media, as well as high
speed transfer of data to the computer. Use of a card reader also
avoids draining the camera battery during the download process, as
the device takes power from the USB port. An external card reader
allows convenient direct access to the images on a collection of
storage media. But if only one storage card is in use, moving it back
and forth between the camera and the reader can be inconvenient.

Many modern cameras support the PictBridge standard, which allows

them to send data directly to a PictBridge-capable computer printer
without the need for a computer. Some DVD recorders and television
sets can read memory cards used in cameras; alternatively several
types of flash card readers have TV output capability.

Modes
Many digital cameras have preset modes for different applications.
Within the constraints of correct exposure various parameters can be
changed, including exposure, aperture, focusing, light metering, white
balance, and equivalent sensitivity. For example a portrait might use a
wider aperture to render the background out of focus, and would seek
out and focus on a human face rather than other image content.

Integration
Many devices include digital cameras built into or integrated into them.
For example, mobile phones often include digital cameras; those that
do are sometimes known as camera phones. Other small electronic
devices (especially those used for communication) such as PDAs,
laptops and BlackBerry devices often contain an integral digital
camera. Additionally, some digital camcorders contain a digital camera
built into them.

Due to the limited storage capacity and general emphasis on

convenience rather than image quality in such integrated or converged
devices, the vast majority of these devices store images in the lossy
but compact JPEG file format.

Image data storage

A CompactFlash (CF) card is one of many media types used to store
digital photographs.

Most digital cameras utilize some form of removable storage to store

image data. While the vast majority of the media types are some form
of flash memory (CompactFlash, SD, etc.) there are storage methods
that use other technologies such as Microdrives (very small hard disk
drives), CD single (185 MB), and 3.5" floppy disks.

Although JPEG is the most common method of compressing image

data, there are other methods such as TIFF and RAW (the latter being
highly non-standardized across brands and even models of a brand).
Most cameras include Exif data that provides metadata about the
picture. Such Exif data include aperture, exposure time, focal length,
date & time taken, and camera model.