How Compact Digital Camera Works

The simplified version of how the camera works is that it uses lens to focus light on photosensor. Most compact digital camera use charge-coupled device (CCD) as photosensor. When light strikes the sensor, it will record the image electronically and transfer it for organization. After that, it will convert the image into binary digital data and stored in memory.

In order to get an ideal photograph, the amount of light reaching the photosensor must be controlled carefully. To achieve that, you need to control the shutter speed and the aperture size. And to make things easier for you, the compact digital camera manufacturers have set the shutter speed electronically and set the aperture size on automation.

Megapixel plays an important role on the quality of your picture. It is related to the amount of details in your picture. So, the more megapixels you have the more detail you will have on your image.

You can see that cameras nowadays come with optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom is more important because it actually zooms into your subject while digital zoom only enlarges your picture. That is why sometimes you will get fuzzy picture with digital zoom.

Cameras today also come with LCD screen for you to preview the picture you took. Don't misunderstand that the digital camera is compact and the LCD screen will be small. It depends on how the manufacturer fir the screen to the camera.

If you have a digital camera back in the early days, you should remember that the storage device was built into the camera. That gave some frustration to some photographer because you need to clear the pictures when the memory is full. Luckily, as the technology evolves, you can now enjoy portable memory storage.

You can now store your pictures into memory devices like SD cards or smart media cards. When the memory is full, you can just label the memory device and keep it as your album. Furthermore, memory device nowadays come in different sizes. The storage amount of the memory device depends on the quality of your picture and how frequent you take photograph.