Thapa, 1 Anup Thapa Anna Voisard ENGL 21007 - A October 24, 2016 The Film and Digital camera Film/Analog Camera: The use of photographic film was introduced by George Eastman who started manufacturing paper film in 1885. In a film camera also know as analog camera, film is exposed to light in order to take a picture. A film is a strip of plastic which is coated with special light-sensitive chemicals for exposure in camera. When it is exposed, an image of an object that is being photographed is created within the chemical layer of the material. Then a negative of that image is made by chemical process. A film camera is useless without a film.
Thapa, 2 Figure 1: An old film camera, its interior workings and a film. Although film cameras are cheaper than digital cameras one must spend money to develop their negatives for printing the photo. The film costs money too. This may be a little bit of hassle for some, but anyone with an interest and passion in photography would actually always be fascinated. After the film is full it can no longer store any more images. Therefore, the film is now ready to be developed. Nowadays it is much easier to develop films because of technology. Few drugstores such as CVS develops films. The film is placed inside a developing machine it does rest of the work to print the photos. So no wonder why digital cameras are so popular. They are still known to be much user friendly and don t require much effort to operate. Digital Camera: A digital camera is an electronic device that records audios and videos and captures still images. The original digital camera was invented by Steven Sasson in the 1970s. Before digital cameras were developed people would capture images and record videos in two different devices. But now they can do both in a digital camera. This combination is what makes it so popular and very easy to operate.
Thapa, 3 Figure 2: A modern Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera. When the shutter release button is pressed, an aperture opens at the front of the camera and light streams through the lens. As shown below in figure 3, there is no film inside a digital camera. It uses an electronic sensor to transform images and videos into electronic images and store them in a digital form. Light from the object that is being photographed zooms into the camera lens. This incoming picture hits the image sensor chip, which breaks it up into millions of pixels. The color and brightness of each pixel is then measured by the sensor and stored in as numbers.
Thapa, 4 Figure 3: The interior workings of a DSLR camera After the images are captured by the image sensor, they are transferred and stored in the camera storage in a digital format. This way images can also be easily transferred to a computer. These pictures can be viewed or manipulated using a photo editing software. Most digital cameras store images in a removable memory card which is slided into a slot in the camera. The amount of images that one can store in a memory card really depends on the storage capacity of the memory card, the resolution of the images, or the amount of compression used. Digital cameras can often be unaffordable for many families. But now people are not only limited to purchasing camera manufactured by the popular brand, there are variety of different manufacturers that make similar cameras and sell them in cheaper prices. The image quality is better in a digital camera than in a film camera. The reason why these cameras are so expensive may be because of their build quality and materials used. They have better optics, larger sensors, and they can be used with not only one lens, but variety of other lenses and these
Thapa, 5 cameras use advanced technology. But nonetheless these carefully crafted technology are worth every penny one spends. Figure 4: The memory slot of a DSLR camera (left), and a memory card (right).