Types and differences of digital cameras

Lead: With the advent of the era of high image quality, I think more and more people are not satisfied with the camera quality attached to their mobile phones and the functions of small digital cameras at home, but have the idea of further upgrading their digital cameras. However, with the progress of digital technology, the technology of camera in electronic equipment has grown rapidly, which is surprising. In recent years, various brands have gradually developed their own unique strategies and markets, which makes consumers more diverse and confused.

Types and differences of digital cameras However, there are actually many types of cameras, not just "digital cameras", so when discussing opinions, terminology problems often arise. What kind of camera should be called a SLR? What is a SLR? What are the popular micro-single and light SLR in recent years? The following is my own experience in observing the types of cameras on the market for several years. I hope that through a simple explanation, when discussing how to choose a suitable camera, we can first understand and dispel the doubts about the basic knowledge of modern digital cameras. Please correct me if there are any mistakes.

1. Non-interchangeable lens camera (consumer grade).

Usually, the "digital camera" we often say refers to a consumer-grade digital camera different from a SLR camera. Non-interchangeable mirror digital camera is far from SLR camera in camera structure. The biggest feature is that the combination of the fuselage and the lens is bound during the design. Another important feature of the camera is that the digital photosensitive element inside the camera is quite small. With the decrease of photosensitive elements, the volume of the lens can also be reduced accordingly, thus achieving the requirement of lightweight of the whole camera.

Due to the characteristics of interchangeable lenses in design, the camera's viewing angle range is naturally limited by the manufacturer, which is not suitable for professional work. The market positioning of such cameras is mostly oriented to ordinary consumers and targeted at home customers. The concept of digital camera in every household is the same as that of TV washing machine in every household. The design of this camera will lower the user threshold, cancel many complicated custom functions and replace them with computer automatic programming. The result of the design and development of this model is a fully automatic digital camera, or a fool camera. Generally speaking, the target customers of automatic cameras are people who don't want to study machines. These people are not sensitive to the judgment of fuselage performance and optical quality. Therefore, the automatic cameras designed by various manufacturers are usually cheaper, and the design is fully automatic, convenience-oriented, rather than quality-oriented. However, there is still a price threshold between SLR cameras and automatic cameras, which leads to a group of users unable to start with SLR cameras in price and unable to meet the needs of automatic cameras in use. Therefore, among the non-interchangeable-mirror digital cameras, there are so-called SLR-like cameras to meet the needs of this amateur user. Here are some portable automatic cameras, SLR cameras and all-weather digital cameras.

(1) fully automatic digital camera, portable camera, compact camera (fool camera).

Portable camera is compact, easy to carry, rich in preset scenes and has automatic function. With the development of electronic engine efficiency applied to digital cameras, many fancy special effects are generally added to cameras on the market, and many post-production functions such as lomo style imitation and axis shift effect imitation are built in. Due to the binding of camera body and lens, and the cancellation of many custom functions, fully automatic cameras are not as adaptable as high-end cameras. In addition, due to the small lens quality and digital photosensitive elements, the image quality taken by automatic cameras is difficult to compare with that of high-end cameras.

Generally speaking, modern automatic cameras are equipped with built-in flash, exposure compensation, flash control, red-eye prevention, hand shock prevention and other functions besides more changeable scene modes for users to choose. And many other functions. The appeal of using an automatic camera lies in intuitive operation, the program function of pressing the shutter once, hand shock prevention to improve the shooting success rate, multiple zoom lenses for different occasions, and finally high pixels.

(2) SLR cameras, bridge cameras and high-order portable automatic cameras (SLR bridge cameras/advanced compact cameras).

In the market, besides calling automatic cameras digital cameras and fool cameras, the existence of SLR-like cameras is often mentioned. However, it is worth noting that although there is the word SLR in the name, the SLR-like camera is not a SLR camera because of its own non-replaceable lens. However, as can be seen from the name, manufacturers mainly focus on the portability of fully automatic cameras and the mobility of SLR cameras when launching SLR cameras.

Because the customer base of SLR-like cameras is different from the users of fool cameras, manufacturers have improved the quality of lenses and enhanced the electronic performance of the fuselage with lenses. In the operational performance of the camera, the design consideration will be to imitate the maneuverability of the SLR camera. There are many kinds of SLR cameras with the same structure as SLR cameras, just to give users the same sense of control as real SLR cameras.

But we won't say that SLR cameras are just low-level replicas of SLR cameras. SLR-like cameras are more like a bridge between fool cameras and professional cameras in product positioning. Users who can't afford the high cost of SLR cameras can choose a certain quality SLR-like camera to meet their own needs.

(3) Waterproof digital camera.

Waterproof digital camera is basically a side branch of fool camera, but it has been strengthened in the firmness and waterproof of the fuselage, which makes it have certain anti-fall and waterproof characteristics. When designing all-weather digital, Hyundai will add scene functions such as underwater photography according to its waterproof and diving characteristics, and equipped with LED fill light for underwater video.

The collision-resistant solid fuselage is very suitable for mountain climbers. In some steep occasions, you don't have to worry about the 3C products at hand. With the development of modern technology, many all-weather digital cameras now have built-in GPS positioning and WIFI transmission functions.

And what is the "micro-single" that has swept the camera product market in recent years? Now, in major exhibition venues and tourist attractions, in addition to the common large black SLR cameras and small and exquisite automatic digital cameras, there are more colorful figures. This new camera has a small and light body. Although it is not as portable as a business card camera, it is still very small compared with a SLR camera, and it is about the same size as a SLR camera.

However, this new era camera does not have a fixed name in the market because it has been put into the market for a relatively new time. Common appellations are "micro-single", "light SLR", "evil camera" and "camera without anti-SLR". Moreover, there are still many consumers who will confuse products similar to SLR with micro-orders. The following will introduce our traditional SLR camera and this new small SLR camera.

Second, the interchangeable lens camera.

I still believe that many consumers have the impression that the so-called "SLR camera" is black, big, with a big lens, and their eyes should be attached to the camera when taking pictures. But most of these are the stereotypes we get by observing a photographer who takes pictures with a SLR camera as a bystander. This description is only half right.

When we judge whether a digital camera belongs to what we call a SLR camera, the first requirement is whether the camera belongs to the interchangeable lens category. Then we will judge that when we use this camera for composition, the image received through the mirror lens inside the fuselage will appear in the optical observation window of the camera after being refracted by the pentagonal mirror. When the user completes the composition and focusing through the optical observation window of the camera body and presses the shutter, the reflector inside the camera body will rise, open the shutter, expose the digital photosensitive element behind it, receive the image data transmitted through the lens, and close the shutter, and the reflector will fall down again to restore the standby state.

It doesn't matter if you don't understand the above. When you find that a camera can only take pictures through the small viewfinder behind the fuselage, this camera is a SLR camera. "What you see is what you get." An important feature of using a SLR camera is that what you see through the viewfinder is the picture received by the lens, and this picture will also be your photo. (Of course, this sentence is not completely accurate. On the one hand, the viewfinder has the problem of framing rate. With different shutter/aperture combinations, the images seen by the viewfinder may not be the same as the actual photos. )

However, the same micro-single launch, we have a vague area when judging the standard of SLR. The similarities and differences between these two cameras belonging to the interchangeable lens system will be briefly described below.

(1) Digital Single Lens Reflective Camera -DSLR

Digital SLR camera is a common mainstream photography tool in the field of photography at present, but in recent years, due to the price reduction and some cultural factors, SLR cameras have gradually spread to ordinary consumers and other non-professional fields. Here, let's observe the literal meaning of his original English text, which literally translates as "single-lens reflective digital camera" In Japan, it is called a scanning camera, while in Chinese mainland, it is called a SLR camera. As for Taiwan Province Province, deeply influenced by Japanese, it is called SLR camera. The characteristics of SLR camera in structure and camera operation are: light enters the camera through the lens, reflects on the pentaprism or pentaprism through the reflector, and then refracts and presents in the observation window. The user performs composition and focusing through the optical observation window. After determining the focal length and composition, when the user presses the shutter to shoot an image, the mirror will rise, allowing light to directly enter the rear photosensitive medium (negative film or digital photosensitive element). When the mirror rises, a black scene with no picture will appear in the optical observation window for the time being, because the light path is blocked.

When we finish a shooting, the digital camera will store the photos in the memory card inserted into the body. We can view the photos we just took in real time through the screen on the back of the fuselage and see the actual effect, and we can directly delete or immediately post-produce the fuselage according to our own preferences. After 2008, digital video recording is no longer limited to fully automatic cameras and digital video cameras. Digital SLR cameras released after this year support the function of dynamic recording one after another, and almost all of them support full HD photography so far. This wave of technological innovation allows players who like to shoot short films to enjoy high-quality video recording experience without having to bear the high cost of digital cameras, as long as they buy SLR cameras.

(2) Micro-single-mirrorless interchangeable lens camera -MILC and electronic observation window interchangeable lens camera-evil camera.

I think from the two naming methods of the title, we can know that this young camera still has no fixed name in the market. But I want to call it a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera-mirrorless camera is a more appropriate term. The micro-single is not far from the SLR camera in appearance and structure. The biggest difference is that the reflector in the fuselage is cancelled. The settings of pentaprism and optical observation window have also been deleted. These empty spaces greatly reduce the distance between the lens and the photosensitive element, and also greatly reduce the volume of the camera body. Therefore, the reason why the micro-single is called light is the change in appearance relative to the SLR camera. Because the English abbreviation is EVIL Camera, it is sometimes called evil camera, which implies that the lightweight advantage brought by the structural design of this camera will impact the camera market and its power is very evil.

After canceling the mirror structure, the light can directly reach the photosensitive element in the fuselage after passing through the lens, and the computer of the fuselage will present the image information received by the photosensitive element in the screen on the back of the machine or in the electronic observation window. This control method is the same as that of portable cameras, so compared with SLR cameras, micro-single is lower in user threshold and more easily accepted by mass consumers. Therefore, in terms of market segments, we will also regard the micro-single as a consumer-grade digital camera. In the foreseeable future, it is very possible for every household to have a micro-single.

However, there is another more important feature that makes micro-single flourish, and that is its scale advantage. Compared with SLR-like cameras, micro-single cameras have the advantages of multi-theme performance in lens and body quality, and are also widely loved by amateur photographers and even professional photographers.

(From the left is the micro-single without electronic viewfinder, with electronic viewfinder, SLR and SLR)

The structural design of microchip accords with the simple aesthetics of contemporary design. After canceling the mirror structure, the continuous shooting speed can be faster, the focus shift problem can be improved, and the micro-vibration caused by the mirror lifting is no longer bothered. In the foreseeable future, it is believed that the mirror system will not appear in the mainstream photographic equipment in the field of photography, and the mirrorless SLR camera is the design method of photographic equipment in the new era.

However, due to the limitation of electronic technology at this stage, micro-single camera can not replace SLR camera for the time being. I personally don't take micro-sheets as the first choice when purchasing photographic equipment. Apart from ordinary consumers, micro-scale is based on striking a proper balance between portability and image quality. Many photographers and amateur photographers will choose the micro-camera as a portable camera or a backup camera.

(General portable camera at the top right and micro single camera at the bottom right)

(3) Others

Of course, interchangeable lens cameras are not just digital SLR and micro-single. There are also so-called linkage ranging cameras, digital cameras and back cameras. However, because ordinary consumers don't often come into contact with it, I won't introduce it here.