Digital photography
Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film.
Digital photographs are typically created solely by computer-based photoelectric and mechanical techniques, without wet bath chemical processing.
This enables the user to review, adjust, or delete a captured photograph within seconds, making this a form of instant photography, in contrast to most photochemical cameras from the preceding era.
Much of the technology originated in the space industry, where it pertains to highly customized, embedded systems combined with sophisticated remote telemetry.
[4] The first semiconductor image sensor was the charge-coupled device (CCD), invented by physicists Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith at Bell Labs in 1969.
[6] This semiconductor circuit was later used in the first digital video cameras for television broadcasting,[7] and its invention was recognized by a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.
[10][11] The first published color digital photograph was produced in 1972 by Michael Francis Tompsett using CCD sensor technology and was featured on the cover of Electronics Magazine.
[12] The Cromemco Cyclops, a digital camera developed as a commercial product and interfaced to a microcomputer, was featured in the February 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine.
[23][24][25] Originally offered to professional photographers for a hefty price, by the mid-to-late 1990s, due to technology advancements, digital cameras were commonly available to the general public.
[26] The camera phone further helped popularize digital photography, along with the Internet, social media,[27] and the JPEG image format.
[28] Small, convenient, and easy to use, camera phones have made digital photography ubiquitous in the daily life of the general public.
However, some special-purpose cameras, such as those for thermal mapping, or low light viewing, or high speed capture, may record only monochrome (grayscale) images.
The reduction from three-dimensional color to grayscale or simulated sepia toning may also be performed by digital post-processing, often as an option in the camera itself.
Some function as webcams, some use the PictBridge standard to connect to printers without using a computer, and some can display pictures directly on a television set.
Similarly, many camcorders can take still photographs and store them on videotape or flash memory cards with the same functionality as digital cameras.
Some digital cameras can show these blown highlights in the image review, allowing the photographer to re-shoot the picture with a modified exposure.
Cards with high speed and capacity are suited to video and burst mode (capture several photographs in quick succession).
The primary advantage of consumer-level digital cameras is the low recurring cost, as users need not purchase photographic film.
When the pre-programmed 25-picture limit is reached, the camera is returned to the store, and the consumer receives back prints and a CD-ROM with their photos.
Consumers became able to view, transfer, edit, and distribute digital images with ordinary home computers rather than using specialized equipment.
Users can set their smartphones to upload products to the Internet, preserving images even if the camera is destroyed or the photos deleted.
Unlike film and print which are tangible, digital image storage is ever-changing, with old media and decoding software becoming obsolete or inaccessible by new technologies.
The web has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published online by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes).
Digital photography and social media allow organizations and corporations to make photographs more accessible to a greater and more diverse population.
For example, National Geographic Magazine has Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram accounts, each of which includes content aimed at the specific audiences found on its platform.
The ability to create and fabricate realistic imagery digitally—as opposed to untouched photos—changes the audience's perception of "truth" in digital photography.
[41] Digital manipulation enables pictures to adjust the perception of reality, both past and present, and thereby shape people's identities, beliefs, and opinions.
Filters that emulated traditional analog effects (such as film grain, scratches, fading, and polaroid borders) grew immensely in popularity alongside the idea of social photography, the causal sharing of everyday images.
With its manual controls, adjustable settings, interchangeable lenses, and having an electronic viewfinder or LCD screen[45] to display images straight from the sensor,[46] mirrorless cameras have the advantage over DSLRs.
[53] Research and development continues to refine the lighting, optics, sensors, processing, storage, display, and software used in digital photography.
