Digital Camera

1. Digital Camera July 16, 2005

2. Agenda • Conventional cameras vs. digital cameras • Understanding the basic • Image sensors • Resolution • Capturing color • Pixels • What can you do after you take the pictures • Selecting a digital camera • What else do you want to buy?

3. Conventional Camera vs. Digital Camera • Conventional film camera: • Basic elements • an optical element (the lens) • a chemical element (the film) • a mechanical element (the camera body itself) • Process the film chemically • Print it onto photographic paper • Digital Camera • Basic elements • An optical element (the lens) • A semiconductor device that records light electronically • Removable storage device • A mechanical element (the camera body itself) • A computer then breaks this electronic information down into digital data • You can view the result immediately • Print it onto photographic paper via printer • Send and store the images digitally

4. Understand the Basic • Understand the basic • Image sensors • Resolution • Capturing color • Pixels

5. Understand the Basic • Image Sensors • A collection of tiny light-sensitive diodes. • Diodes convert photons (light) into electrons (electrical charge). • These diodes are called photosites. • In a nutshell, each photosite is sensitive to light -- the brighter the light that hits a single photosite, the greater the electrical charge that will accumulate at that site. A CMOS image sensor A diode is the simplest possible semiconductor device. A diode allows current to flow in one direction but not the other. Kodak’s CCD

6. Understand the Basic • Image Sensors • Most common types of image sensors are • Charge Coupled Device (CCD) • Complementary Metal oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) • Convert light into electrons at the photosites. Think of it as having a 2-D array of thousands or millions of tiny solar cells, each of which transforms the light from one small portion of the image into electrons. • Both CCD and CMOS devices perform this task using a variety of technologies. • The next step is to read the value (accumulated charge) of each cell in the image. • In a CCD device, the charge is actually transported across the chip and read at one corner of the array. An analog-to-digital converter turns each pixel's value into a digital value. • In most CMOS devices, there are several transistors at each pixel that amplify and move the charge using more traditional wires. The CMOS approach is more flexible because each pixel can be read individually. • CCDs use a special manufacturing process to create the ability to transport charge across the chip without distortion. This process leads to very high-quality sensors in terms of fidelity and light sensitivity.

7. Understand the Basic • Difference Between CCD and CMOS • CCD sensors creates high-quality, low-noise images. CMOS sensors, traditionally, are more susceptible to noise. • Because each pixel on a CMOS sensor has several transistors located next to it, the light sensitivity of a CMOS chip is lower. Many of the photons hitting the chip hit the transistors instead of the photodiode. • CMOS sensors traditionally consume little power. Implementing a sensor in CMOS yields a low-power sensor. CCDs, on the other hand, use a process that consumes lots of power. CCDs consume as much as 100 times more power than an equivalent CMOS sensor. • CMOS chips can be fabricated on just about any standard silicon production line, so they tend to be extremely inexpensive compared to CCD sensors. • CCD sensors have been mass produced for a longer period of time, so they are more mature. They tend to have higher qualitypixels, and more of them.

8. Understand the Basic • DigitizeInformation • The light is converted to electrical charge; but the electrical charges that build up in the CCD are not digital signals that are ready to be used by your computer. • In order to digitize the information, the signal must be passed through an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). • Think of each photosite as a bucket or a well, and think of the photons of light as raindrops. As the raindrops fall into the bucket, water accumulates (in reality, electrical charge accumulates). • Some buckets have more water and some buckets have less water, representing brighter and darker sections of the image. • Sticking to the analogy, the ADC measures the depth of the water, which is considered analog information. Then it converts that information to binary form.

9. 135 66 85 38 120 92 71 48 216 Understand the Basic The Digitizing Process Raindrops = Photons of Light Filter Bucket = CCD ADC – Analog-to-digital Converter to convert raindrop (light) amount to digital info

10. Understand the Basic • Resolution • The amount of detail that the camera can capture is called the resolution. • It is measured in pixels. • The more pixels your camera has, the more detail it can capture. • The more detail you have, the more you can blow up a picture before it becomes "grainy" and starts to look out-of-focus.

11. Understand the Basic • Capturing Color • Each photosite is colorblind. • It only keeps track of the total intensity of the light that strikes its surface. • In order to get a full color image, most sensors use filtering to look at the light in its three primary colors. • Once all three colors have been recorded, they can be added together to create the full spectrum of colors that you've grown accustomed to seeing on computer monitors and color printers.

12. Understand the Basic How the three colors mix to form many colors?

13. Understand the Basic • Capturing Color • There are several ways of recording the three colors in a digital camera. • The highest quality cameras use three separate sensors, each with a different filter over it. • Split Beam • Spinning Disk • Interpolation • Bayer Filter Pattern • Demosaicing Algorithms • Most consumer cameras on the market today use a single sensor with alternating rows of green/red and green/blue filters (Bayer Filter Pattern).

14. Understand the Basic • Pixels and Resolution • 256x256 pixels – 65K total pixels. Very cheap cameras. Picture quality is almost always unacceptable. • 640x480 pixels – 307K total pixels. Low end on most "real" cameras. Great for e-mail and/or post them on a Web site. • 1216x912 pixels – 1.1M total pixels. Good resolution for printing images. • 1600x1200 pixels – 1.9M total pixels. “High resolution“ for printing larger sizes, such as 8x10 inches. You can find cameras today with up to 10.2 million pixels.

15. Resolution: Printing Pictures • Kodak recommends the following as minimum resolutions for different print sizes: Print Size Megapixels Image Resolution Wallet 0.3 640x480 pixels 4x5 inches 0.4 768x512 pixels 5x7 inches 0.8 1152x768 pixels 8x10 inches 1.6 1536x1024 pixels

16. What Can You Do after You Take the Pictures? • Viewing the Pictures • Image Storage • Printing the Pictures • Fun Projects

17. View the Pictures • Digital cameras on the market today have an LCD screen, which means that you can view your picture right away. • This is one of the great advantages of a digital camera: You get immediate feedback on what you capture. • Once the image leaves the CCD sensor (by way of the ADC and a microprocessor), it is ready to be viewed on the LCD. • Of course, that's not the end of the story. Viewing the image on your camera would lose its charm if that's all you could do. • You want to be able to load the picture into your computer or send it directly to a printer.

18. View the Pictures with Fun • With the image-editing software that often comes with your camera you can do lots of neat things: • crop the picture to capture just the part you want • add text to the picture • make the picture brighter or darker • change the contrast and sharpness • apply filters to the picture to make it look blurry, painted, embossed, etc. • resize pictures • rotate pictures • cut stuff out of one picture and put it into another • "stitch" together many pictures to create one large panoramic/360-degree picture • create a 3-D picture that you can rotate and zoom in on and out of

19. Image Storage Which one shall I buy?

20. Image Storage • There are a number of storage systems currently used in digital cameras: • Built-in memory - Some extremely inexpensive cameras have built-in Flash memory. • SmartMedia cards - SmartMedia cards are small Flash memory modules. • CompactFlash - CompactFlash cards are another form of Flash memory, similar to but slightly larger than SmartMedia cards. • Memory Stick - Memory Stick is a proprietary form of Flash memory used by Sony. • Floppy disk - Some cameras store images directly onto floppy disks. • Hard disk - Some higher-end cameras use small built-in hard disks, or PCMCIA hard-disk cards, for image storage. • Writeable CD and DVD - Some of the newest cameras are using writeable CD and DVD drives to store images. • In order to transfer the files from a Flash memory device to your computer without using cables, you will need to have a drive or reader for your computer. These devices behave much like floppy drives and are inexpensive to buy. • Think of all these storage devices as reusable digital film. When you fill one up, either transfer the data or put another one into the camera. • The different types of Flash memory devices are not interchangeable. Each camera manufacturer has decided on one device or another. Each of the Flash memory devices also needs some sort of caddy or card reader in order to transfer the data

21. Image Storage • The two main file formats used by digital cameras are TIFF and JPEG. • TIFF is an uncompressed format and JPEG is a compressed format. • Most cameras use the JPEG file format for storing pictures, and they sometimes offer quality settings (such as medium or high). • The following chart will give you an idea of the file sizes you might expect with different picture sizes. Image Size TIFF JPEG JPEG (uncompressed)(high quality) (medium quality) 640x480 1.0 MB 300 KB 90 KB 800x600 1.5 MB 500 KB 130 KB 1024x768 2.5 MB 800 KB 200 KB 1600x1200 6.0MB 1.7 MB 420 KB

22. Image Storage

23. Printing the Pictures • Type of printing • Upload to computer and then print to printer • Direct from storage device to printer • On-line printing service • Snapfish (www.snapfish.com 12 cent/photo + shipping) • War-Mart (www.walmart.com Photo Center, order on-line 15 cent/photo & pick up in store) • Winkflash (www.winkflash.com with promo 8 cent/photo, 99 cent/shipping) • Costco (www.costco.com Photo Center) • Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com ) • Kodak Gallery (www.kodakgallery.com ) • In-store printing service

24. Fun Projects • Slide show • Greeting card • Calendar • Poster • Invitation • MPEG movie

25. Selecting a Digital Camera • Selection criteria • What type of photo I going to take? • Does the size of the camera matter to me? • What do I do with the pictures? • What do you have to look out when you are shopping for a digital camera? • More megapixels, more cropping flexibility • Optical vs. digital zoom • LCD • Image Storage • How do you shop for a digital camera?

26. What Are You Looking For? • Resolution (pixels, imaging sizing selection) • Image sensor type (CCD vs. CMOS) • Media storage type • Shutter speed range, ISO Film speed setting • Optical and digital zoom (focus on optical zoom) • AF Zoom • Recording mode (normal, TIFF, e-mail, Burst shooting) • Len and SLR • Camera size • LCD size • Self Timer, flash light, nightshot ability • Red eye reduction capability, special effects

27. Compare Before You Buy It? • Go on-line to do the comparison • www.dpreview.com • www.zdnet.com • www.digicamera.com • Learn more for on-line • www.howstuffwork.com for digital camera • www.sony.com for Sony 101 • www.nikon.com for Digitutor • www.canon.com for product descriptions • www.bestbuy.com for “compare with products in this pricing range” (after you select a product)

28. What Else Do You Want to Buy? • Printer • Regular color printer • Photo Printer – HP, Epson, Canon and Lexmark • Photo processing software • Editing and printing • Media management • Other accessory • Storage media • Additional battery • Tripod • Camera bag • Additional lens • Additional flash light

29. Q & A

30. Agenda for the Next Session (Aug. 6, 2005) • Photo editing • Why do I have to edit the photo? • What do I need to edit a photo? • Basic editing functions • Look outs for photo editing • Photo printing • Print them yourself or not to print them yourself • Cost of printing it yourself • What do you need to print a photo? • Photo printing alternative • Photo project • Creating slide show • Calendar • Gift for special occasion • Photo archiving and storing