The origin of digital photography?

Digital camera, also called digital camera, is an integrated product of light, machinery and electricity. It first appeared in America. More than 20 years ago, the United States used it to transmit photos to the ground via satellite. Later, digital photography was converted to civilian use, and its application scope continued to expand. The core component of a digital camera is a charge coupled device (CCD) image sensor, which is made of highly sensitive semiconductor materials. It can convert light into charge, and the charge is converted into a digital signal through an analog-to-digital conversion chip. After the digital signal is compressed, it is saved by the flash memory or built-in hard disk card in the camera, so the data can be easily transmitted to the computer, and with the help of computer processing means, the image can be modified as needed and imagined.

The biggest advantage of digital camera lies in its digitalization of information. Because digital information can be instantly transmitted to the whole world through digital communication network, digital cameras can first realize real-time transmission of images.

As a computer input device, digital camera has made great progress in recent years. First of all, due to the progress of technology and technology, the resolution of digital cameras, which are the mainstream models of computer input devices, is generally in the order of millions of pixels. It looks almost the same as a traditional camera. Secondly, due to the increase of production and sales and the progress of technology, the price of digital cameras is also dropping rapidly. All these have promoted the popularization of digital camera applications, and then prompted manufacturers to invest more in technology and technology. This benign interaction makes digital cameras an indispensable device in computer applications.

The appearance, some functions and operations of digital cameras are similar to those of ordinary cameras. But there are several differences between digital cameras and traditional cameras:

The production process is different: as a photographic tool, the appearance of a digital camera is basically similar to that of a traditional camera, except that the traditional camera uses silver salt photosensitive material, that is, film, as the carrier, and the photographed film has to be developed to get photos. Just after shooting, the operator can't know the quality of the photos, so delete the bad photos. Under normal circumstances, the effect of photos processed in darkroom cannot be changed. A digital camera uses a charge coupled device (CCD) to sense light instead of film, and then converts the light signal into an electrical signal, which is recorded on a memory card after analog-to-digital conversion. The memory card can be reused. Because the photos taken by the digital camera need to be digitized before being stored, the photos taken can be played back and viewed, and the dissatisfied photos can be deleted and retaken immediately. Connecting a digital camera to a computer after shooting can easily transfer photos to the computer for various processing, and then print them out through a printer, which is the main difference between a digital camera and a traditional camera.

The shooting effect is different: the silver halide film of traditional camera can capture continuous tones and colors, while the CCD element of digital camera will lose some details in dark or bright light. More importantly, the pixels of images captured by CCD elements of digital cameras are much smaller than those captured by traditional cameras. Generally speaking, the resolution of traditional 35mm film is 2,500 lines per inch, which is equivalent to 6,543.8+0.8 million pixels or even higher, while the best CCD used in digital cameras at present can not achieve 6,543.8+0.8 million pixels. At present, the photos taken by digital cameras are not comparable to traditional cameras in terms of clarity, texture, level and color saturation.

Shooting speed is different: you need to wait 1.5 seconds before pressing the shutter, that is, before the digital camera actually records data. This is because digital cameras need to adjust the aperture, change the shutter speed, check the autofocus and turn on the flash. Every time a digital camera takes a photo, it has to wait 3-7 seconds to take the next photo. This is because digital cameras have to compress the photos they take and store them. Due to the slow storage speed of the memory card, the shooting speed of the digital camera, especially the continuous shooting speed, can't meet the requirements of professional photography. Moreover, because every action of the camera needs power consumption, the power consumption of digital cameras is large. These are the shortcomings of digital cameras.

The storage media are different: the images of digital cameras are digitally stored on magnetic media, while the images of traditional cameras are chemically recorded on silver halide films.

There are different input and output methods: the images of digital cameras can be directly input into the computer for processing and printing. The image of a traditional camera must be developed in a darkroom, and it must be scanned into a computer by a scanner for processing, and the quality of the scanned image will inevitably be affected by the accuracy of the scanner. In this way, even if the original quality is higher, the scanned image is far from good. Digital cameras can easily capture all the moments in nature as digital images, which can be directly processed by computers and displayed on TV. Therefore, many computer or household appliance manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Apple and Sharp, are competing to produce digital cameras, and digital cameras are no longer just exclusive products of photographic equipment factories such as Kodak or Fuji. At present, several Japanese photographic equipment companies are trying to eliminate silver bromide films within five years. It is predicted that in the next 10 year, most people in the world will use digital cameras. Many multinational companies compete for the digital camera market precisely because they see the outstanding advantages of digital cameras, that is, it can benefit users in terms of speed, convenience, reducing the cost of pictures and improving efficiency.

China's digital camera market has only risen quietly in recent years. From the perspective of distribution brands, brand-name products are the main products, among which the most mainstream brands are fujifilm, Kodak, Olympus, Sony and so on. 1998 The total sales volume of digital cameras in China was about 40,000 sets, and 1999 is expected to exceed 60,000 sets. At present, the mainstream models of commercial digital cameras on the market are: Fuji MX-500/MX-600/MX-2900, Olympus 1400XL/2000Zoom, Kodak DC 240/DC 265/DC 240.

Digital camera users are mainly distributed in computers, communications, electronics, finance, transportation, culture, commerce, tourism, architecture, military police and government departments. For individual users, digital cameras are mainly used in tourism, photography and other aspects, and professional photography and convenient work users account for nearly half; As a unit user, it is mainly used for shooting work, followed by product introduction and advertising design, news interview, desktop typesetting and architectural decoration design.

With the increasing global digital craze, coupled with the gradual maturity of digital camera technology and the gradual decline in prices, digital cameras will become one of the fastest-growing industries in the IT industry.