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Digital Camera Technology Advancing Quickly
By Tony Cunningham

The past few years have been kind to digital camera technology, making them more functional while making them easier to use. Being able to take your pictures, preview them on a liquid crystal display screen before printing them can make photography more fun and less expensive than the film-based cameras.

Sometimes it is hard to read through all the terminology used in digital camera technology, especially for those who spent years learning and using film cameras. While the terminology may be new, in order to understand digital camera technology, it may be necessary to learn basically a new language.

For example, the term pixel, in digital camera technology, means picture element and is the leading indicator of how will smooth the picture will look when printed. Digital cameras are all rated in pixels and inform the user how many millions of tiny square make up the picture. A one mega-pixel camera will have one million squares included in it while a five mega-pixel camera will contain five million. In simpler terms, the more mega-pixels, usually expressed as MP, a picture has the smoother the picture will appear.

Color is rendered in a combination of colors, noted as one to 255 in each pixel. Each pixel is defined by a combination of red, blue and green and a different shade of each color combined to provide accuracy. For example, a pixel defined in the digital camera technology of 125-blue, 37-red and 76-green would show as Navy blue. This color rendering is used in each pixel that makes up the color photograph, and provides over 16 million combinations for each color.

Working With Digit Speed And Zoom

When working with film, it was rated for speed, or light-gathering capability. The higher the ISO number, which used to refer to as ASA, the less light that was needed to take the picture. In digital camera technology, there are similar capabilities, expressed in the same ISO ratings. Most digital cameras have a pre-set ISO rating of 400. Meaning it will take decent pictures in the ISO ranges of 100, 200 and 400. Above that, in lesser light, the picture quality will suffer. More expensive digital cameras, may offer settings up to 6,400 ISO. These type cameras are typical of the ones used by professionals who work in a variety of lighting conditions.

Digital camera technology also boasts zoom capability in optical and digital zoom. While digital zoom may seem to bring objects closer, it is merely enlarging the entire picture and selecting a section from it to make bigger. Usually, there is a loss of picture quality with digital zoom.

Author Details:
Tony Cunningham, copywriter for various web sites such as the Photography section of TheA-Zof.com and Photo Gallery

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