Everybody loves pictures. We love taking them..."">
August 17, 2007 -- Summertime and vacations are perfect for taking lots of pictures. Digital cameras are are just the thing for the job. Here's how they work.
Everybody loves pictures. We love taking them, posing for them and sharing them with our friends and family. Pictures are a great way to capture special moments in our lives and keep in touch with relatives who live far away.
What does "taking" a picture actually mean? In brief, when you press the button on your camera, the shutter or eye is opened for a split second and the light reflected from an image is recorded onto a section of film inside the camera. When you take the film from your camera to the developer, it is given several chemical baths that transform the image onto a negative, which is then developed into the color prints you get back.
You probably weren't around when Polaroids came out in the 60s, and revolutionized picture-taking. Instead of having to be taken someplace to be developed, Polaroid pictures developed in minutes right inside the camera thanks to a chemical gel built into the film.
The quality of pictures was improving as cameras and film got better, but the process was basically the same. An image was captured on film, which was developed with chemicals to produce the pictures.
Enter the digital camera. This little gadgets can be as small as a credit card, yet not only can you see your picture instantly, you can store hundreds of pictures on them.
Its operation is completely different from its predecessors, which relied on mechanical and chemical processes. The digital camera has a built-in computer that records images electronically - but without electricity. The digital camera has no film.
In short, here's how it works. Since the digital camera is computerized, it must record an image in a way that the computer understands - bytes and bits. A digital image is a long string of 1s and 0s that represent all the dots or pixels that make the image.
NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
Copyright 2007 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.