Digital Camera Information

A digital camera (or digicam for short) is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images on a light-sensitive sensor.

Many compact digital still cameras can record sound and moving video as well as still photograph. In the Western market, digital cameras outsell their 35 mm film counterparts.

Digital cameras can do things film cameras cannot, displaying images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, storing thousands of images on a single small memory device, recording video with sound, and deleting images to free storage space.

Compact Digital Cameras
Compact cameras are designed to be small and portable; the smallest are described as subcompacts or "ultra-compacts". Compact cameras are usually designed to be easy to use, sacrificing advanced features and picture quality for compactness and simplicity; images can usually only be stored using Lossy compression (JPEG). Most have a built-in flash usually of low power, sufficient for nearby subjects. Live preview is almost always used to frame the photo. They may have limited motion picture capability. Compacts often have macro capability, but if they have zoom capability the range is usually less than for bridge and DSLR cameras. They have a greater depth of field, allowing objects within a large range of distances from the camera to be in sharp focus. They are particularly suitable for casual and "snapshot" use.

Digital Camera Connectivity
Many digital cameras can connect directly to a computer to transfer data. Early cameras used the PC serial port. USB is now the most widely used method (most cameras are viewable as USB mass storage), though some have a FireWire port. Some cameras use USB PTP mode for connection instead of USB MSC; some offer both modes.

Other cameras use wireless connections, via Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11 WiFi, such as the Kodak EasyShare One. A common alternative is the use of a card reader which may be capable of reading several types of storage media, as well as high speed transfer of data to the computer. Use of a card reader also avoids draining the camera battery during the download process, as the device takes power from the USB port. An external card reader allows convenient direct access to the images on a collection of storage media. But if only one storage card is in use, moving it back and forth between the camera and the reader can be inconvenient.

Many modern cameras support the PictBridge standard, which allows them to send data directly to a PictBridge-capable computer printer without the need for a computer. Some DVD recorders and television sets can read memory cards used in cameras; alternatively several types of flash card readers have TV output capability.