What is Digital Photography?

Ever wondered 'what is digital photography?' but didn't get any real answers when looking around online?

Well here in this tutorial I am gonna hopefully dispel any confusion and explain exactly 'what is digital photography' in an easy to understand fashion... or at least that's the plan.

What is Digital Photography' Revealed

Digital Photography, in a nutshell, is the reproduction of an external image (i.e. your grandma) through the use of a medium such as a digital slr camera (dslr), digital compact camera, or some other digital capture device such as a web-cam, cell phone, capable of reproducing/storing an image digitally.

Now ask yourself this question: 'Am I any the wiser for knowing that?'

Possibly not, but we're not finished yet, not even close. But I promise you, you will be much more knowledgeable about the whole digital-deal by the end of this tutorial though.

OK, poor word-play jokes aside, let's talk about one of the main developments in digital technology that made digital photography possible. If you're gonna ask yourself 'what is digital photography', you might just as well ask yourself what is the History of Digital Photography

History of Digital Photography

In fact, digital photography has been used in one form or another after CCD sensors (charged-coupled-device) were first invented by scientists in 'Bell labs' in the late 1960's (yes, really that long ago). These sensors are used in many high-end digital cameras today.

CCD's sensors were originally supposed to be used to store computer data. Although its function of storing computer data didn't catch on, by 1975 CCD's were being used in television cameras and flatbed scanners; they were also used in the field of astrophotography, and by the 1980's had pretty much completely replaced plate-photography (the use of photographic plates instead of film) to photograph heavenly-bodies (the ones in the sky, not the ones on Earth).

Sensitive Science

CCD's and CMOS (complemetary metal oxide semiconductor) sensors convert light into electrons in a digital cameras focal-plane (the part behind the lens and shutter which is a sensor and not technically a focal plane anymore).

Each photon becomes a variable of accumulated charge (electron) which represents: light/dark/color across each cell in the sensor. In a CCD This charge is then transported across the sensor and then interpreted at the corner of the sensor cell, whereas in a CMOS the photons/electrons are read by transistors at each pixel that applify and move the charge.

If your head hasn't yet fallen off your shoulders due to a science overload, then let me just say it the way you may want to hear it: A digital SLR with a CCD sensor is better than a digital camera (slr or otherwise) with an CMOS.

CDD's have less noise (i.e. create clearer pictures) whereas a camera with a CMOS's sensor have more noise, although these days CMOS's are getting closer and closer in quality to CCD's.

Still wondering 'What is Digital Photography?', or sorry you ever asked... keep going, we're almost there...

Mega-What? Oh... Mega-Pixels

A mega-pixel simply means 'a million pixels' (those squares you can see if you really, really enlarge a digital photo). Contrary to popular belief the amount of mega-pixels a camera has is not necessarily equal to its picture quality being better than a camera with a smaller available amount of mega-pixels... although you'd be forgiven for thinking so, the way digital cameras are advertised and marketed.

As it turns out, a camera with a larger sensor yet the same amount of megapixels will perform better than a camera with an equal amount of available pixels, yet a smaller sensor. Most digital slr's have larger sensors than compact digital cameras.

So, as you can see, you probably shouldn't pay too much attention to the mega-pixel spec of your camera... in this case, (sensor) size really does count.

I Like my Sushi RAW, Just Like My Digital Image Files!

So, the light has traversed the distance from the outside and into your lens, it then hits the focal-plane/sensor where it is converted from a photon into a charge (electron), and this is then interpreted as a pixel which then creates a digital file.

All good so far.

Now we need somewhere to store this digital data file, of course, we are now going to use our memory card, the technology of which, ironically enough, superseeded our CCD in being the most popular form of technology in data storage (RAM) back in the early 70's.

Our digital camera being a really neat piece of kit, now creates an 'on-the-fly' file of data in the camera. This file is called a RAW file, and is actually a 'kind-of' equivellent of a negative in film photography.

Just the same as a negative is not an actual positive (positive: Photograph produced from a film negative), so a RAW file is information that is not a positive yet. For that it must be transfered to a jpeg or other image format, which most cameras do automatically.

One last interesting point about RAW files is this: There is no actual file type called a RAW file, it's simply a title used to describe a kind of file that contains 'raw' unprocessed information that can be interpreted as a picture later.

Different digital camera companies title there file name differently, e.g, crw, cr2 (Canon) or nef, nrw (Nikon)

NOTE: The point of a RAW file is so that images can be taken and stored in quick succession instead of the camera having to then convert it directly into an image format.

Congratulations if you reached the end of this tutorial. If you're not the science type (I'm not either), you did really well! You deserve a pat on the back.