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The father of the still digital camera was the video camcorders (VTRs) used to record videos for telecast on the television. This camera captured images by converting them into electrical impulses and saving them on to tape. However, all these cameras were Analog in nature. This changed when Nasa converted the format to digital so that it could enhance the images on the computer. Thus the first digital video camera was born.
In 1972 Texas Instruments patented the first film-less electronic camera and in 1981 Sony released the Mavica, which was the first electronic still camera. Mavica recorded still images into a mini disc, which could be read by a video recorder connected to a monitor or a printer.
But the true digital still camera arrived in 1986 when Kodak launched the world's first megapixel sensor. This image sensor could record 1.4 million pixels and produce a 5x7 photo quality print. This was the first true digital camera.
However the camera did not became widely popular because it was too expensive and did not yield quality comparable to film.
Later on Kodak made another major contribution to the home digital camera market by developing PhotoCD. Photographers could take a snap with their digital cameras and take it to a Kodak PhotoCD shop to get a professional quality printout. The company also released Kodak DCS 200, which was gave photographers path-breaking quality as per the standards those days.
But the credit of developing the first consumer level digital camera goes to Apple. The camera called Quicktake 100 could be connected to the computer through a serial cable.
The market for digital cameras really took off with the advent of the colour inkjet printer and the Internet. Now it became very easy to share photographs and even print them with professional quality.
Today digital cameras are cheaper than ever, and their popularity is zooming by the minute. Modern digital cameras also yield very good quality, with as much as 6 mega pixels, or above.
If you find this information useful you should visit the site where you will find lots of interesting articles related to this topic, all original and wrote by Michael Lastun.
A digital camera is such a camera that will take either video or still snaps digitally. It records the images digitally on a light-sensitive sensor. Some digital cameras can take still snaps as well as video and audio. The digital cameras have become very popular nowadays and more and more people are opting for rather than regular cameras.
Digital cameras are technologically much advanced and have many user-friendly features that are usually not found in regular cameras. One such very good feature is that it displays the image on the camera's screen just after you catch it. Thus you can click and record millions and millions of pictures, keep the ones you want and discard the others. After the pictures or videos are recorded, you can edit the images and thus can be a virtual master of the background, people etc. Imagine the fun when you can change the background of a picture taken at your home to be changed to a Hawaiian beach, or changing the hair color of your sister to a wild pink and many other things. The choices are unlimited.
Nowadays digital cameras can be incorporated in many devices like PDAs or mobile phones or computers etc. Some astronomical devices like Hubble Space Telescope also use specialized digital cameras.
Digital camera technology has evolved from the similar technology that first recorded television images. It was in 1951 when the first video tape recorder was used to capture live images using television cameras. They converted the information in electrical impulses and saved the information on magnetic tape. It was actually due to NASA`s space technology that used digital images to capture photographs of surface of moon and advanced computer technology that led to major developments in digital photography.
Government was also using this technology in forms of spy camera and the time that being spy satellites and it contributed immensely in advancement of science of digital imaging. Soon private companies like Kodak, Sony etc were releasing professional digital cameras for ordinary people. Their strong marketing tactics worked and today digital cameras are found everywhere.
There are many varieties of digital camera and we will discuss some of them. Compact digital cameras are one of such varieties and are designed to be small as well as portable. The miniature versions are called subcompact cameras. Though they do not have much advanced features or excellent image quality but they are very simple to use and easy to carry around. Images are stored using Lossy compression in JPEG format. Such cameras are generally equipped with a low power, built-in flash usually sufficient for close subjects. Live preview is generally used for framing the photos. They are perfect for casual and home use.
Another type are Bridge cameras that are higher-end cameras. They resemble DSLRs and also share some advanced features with them but just like compact cameras, the photo framing is done with help of live preview and they also have small sized sensors. A Fuji film FinePix Bridge camera is also equipped with super zoom lenses that give you a chance to take very distant shots, though at the cost of image quality.
Another type is Digital single lens reflex cameras that are based on film SLRs or single-lens reflex cameras. These cameras are characterized by the presence of a mirror-reflex system. Other types include rangefinder and are generally used for film cameras, professional modular digital cameras that are assembled from different modular components and used for specific purposes. The common brands for such cameras include Mamiya and Hasselblad.