Significance of the topic
As computer and web become popular in human’s life, digital images play an important role to express ideas. With the rapid development of technology, digital images can be easily uploaded to computers from the places manipulating by using a variety of software, email to friends or post on a website. Digital images can be saved without worrying about losing good quality of photograph paper or digital video clips can be used over and over again. Sometimes digital files can be used in different format such as mp3 or jpag. There is also no need to worry about running out photo negatives or buying a roll of film when you want to take pictures. Before doing digital photographs, one of the most important things is to have good equipment. The purpose of this paper is to provide users a guide and basic concepts on hardware of digital cameras and camcorders.
Introduction to Digital Camera and Camcorder
How do digital cameras work?
Simply speaking, a digital camera uses semiconductor chips, usually a single Charged Coupled Device (CCD) instead of conventional film. When the shutter opens and light strikes the CCD, temporary electronic changes to the CCD are converted into computer language and recorded on either internal or removable memory. Those images can be viewed on a small screen on the rear of the camera and then later, they can be downloaded to a computer where they can be edited, printed, sent to friends as email, or posted in albums to be shared with others on the Internet. A digital camera may look like a conventional camera, but the process is radically different, and so is the operation. Most digital cameras have more in common with automatic point-and-shoot cameras than they do with professional SLR cameras. They generally have auto-focus, and they can adjust for brightness, shutter speed and aperture automatically. The “film” of a digital camera is a removable media-storage device (floppy disk, flash memory card, etc). As with a film camera, you
simply replace the storage device when it’s full and continue to take pictures. The difference is you don’t need to develop digital pictures. You can download them directly to your computer and they are ready to use (Digital Camera [on-line]).
How do camcorders work?
Digital camcorders have elements of receiving information, LCD screen to see images, and have an added component that takes the analog information the camera gathers and translates it to bytes of data. Instead of storing the video signal as a continuous track of magnetic patterns, it records the picture and sound as ones and zeros. Digital camcorders are so popular because you can copy ones and zeros very easily without losing any of the information you’ve recorded. Analog
information, on the other hand, “fades” with each copy — the copying process doesn’t reproduce the original signal exactly. Video information in digital form can also be loaded onto computers, where you can edit it, copy it, e-mail it and manipulate it. Camcorders and digital cameras both take pictures using CCDs. But since camcorders produce moving images, their CCDs have some additional pieces you won’t find in digital camera CCDs. To create a video signal, a camcorder CCD must take many pictures every second, which the camera then combines to give the impression of movement (Howstuffworks [on-line]).