A digital camera (or digicam for short) is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor.
Front and back of a Canon PowerShot A95.

Many compact digital still cameras can record sound and moving video as well as still photographs. In the Western market, digital cameras outsell their 35 mm film counterparts.

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, recording video with sound, and deleting images to free storage space. Some can crop pictures and perform other elementary image editing. Fundamentally they operate in the same manner as film cameras, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device. The combination of the diaphragm and a shutter mechanism is used to admit the correct amount of light to the imager, just as with film; the only difference is that the image pickup device is electronic rather than chemical.

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 specialised digital cameras.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Electronic viewfinder, interchangeable lens cameras

In late 2008 a new type of camera emerged, combining the larger sensors and interchangeable lenses of DSLRs with the live preview viewing system of compact cameras, either through an electronic viewfinder or on the rear LCD. These are simpler and more compact than DSLRs due to the removal of the mirror box, and typically emulate the handling and ergonomics of either DSLRs or compacts. As of 2009 the only such system is Micro Four Thirds, borrowing components from the Four Thirds DSLR system.
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