LCD Screens in Digital Cameras
March 2, 2010
Liquid Crystal Display or the LCD, is the technology that is used for creating embedded screens at the back of almost all digital cameras. In a digital camera, the LCD screen is used for displaying menu options, reviewing photos and also functioning as a live viewfinder. Today, even the inexpensive digital cameras come with full colour LCD screens. Though some of the beginner level digital cameras do not come with separate viewfinders, the LCD itself doubles up as the viewfinder at all times. The LCD screen sharpness depends mainly upon the LCD screen's number of pixels count. LCDs are also present in digital photo frames with the LCD screen being present inside and displaying digital photos.
The LCD screen does the primary function of framing shots. The general trend today is that many of the digital cameras that come with large LCDs, do not come with viewfinders any longer. The LCD is also used for previewing photos and monitoring the settings. You can also view the menus as well as the settings for reviewing recorded images in the playback mode. The LCD display gives you a 100% view of the framed shot.
Digital Cameras come with special menu options for adjusting the LCD contrast as well as brightness. Many advanced digital cameras feature LCDs that can be tilted, twisted and swiveled in a variety of angles, and is of high utility for macro photography situations and also for framing shots that are shot at difficult angles. The LCD screen can also be flipped over for the protection of its surface while not in usage. Though bright lighting conditions can hamper your view, LCDs, over the years, have not only become bigger and larger, but have also improved significantly in terms of colour, resolution and the overall quality.
Resolutions in Digital Cameras
March 1, 2010
When shooting photos, you can adjust the camera settings in order to shoot at a designed resolution of your need. A digital image is made up of tiny dots also called as pixels. Simply, more dots means more pixels means more resolution means better image quality. Therefore, if you intend to send photos through the Internet, you can shoot a lower resolution but if you want to print the photographs, you can always shoot at higher resolutions. Determining the amount of camera resolution you need will depend entirely upon the print size of the photo, such as a poster size or the standard photo print sizes, as such.
The terminology “Resolution” refers to the digital image size produced by the camera and is expressed generally in terms of “megapixels”. The total number of pixels captured by a camera is called as the camera's resolution. For example, a camera that can capture 1600 x 1200 pixels goes on to produce images with a picture resolution of around 1.92 MP or megapixels and is generally referred to as a 2.0 MP camera for marketing purposes. Therefore, a 5MP digital camera would always give better picture quality than a 2 MP camera or a 3 MP camera, since it would amount to more number of pixels.
The advantage of having a digital camera with higher resolutions would mean that you would have more number of pixels to work with in terms of getting prints made. Thus, if you start with a high resolution image, lesser magnification is necessary for getting to the given print size. A printout can be produced from just about any image, but, the more you magnify, the more you degrade its quality. For recording images, each pixel goes on to build up tiny charges of electricity in response to light. Though digital cameras boast of high resolutions, you need to get the one that suits your needs most.
Digital Camera Lenses
February 28, 2010
Understanding digital camera lenses will definitely help in attaining more creative controls for achieving optimum results in digital photography. Choosing the right lens for this task can become quite a complex trade-off between the size, cost, lens speed, weight as well as image quality. In this article, let us have an overview of concepts such as image quality, perspective, prime lens, zoom lens, aperture and focal length.
Lens & Image
Even the simplest of cameras contain lenses that actually comprise of many lens elements that aim at directing the light rays path in such a way that the images are recreated on the digital sensor as accurately in a manner as possible. The ultimate goal, therefore, is to reduce aberrations to the minimum, while utilizing the least and the fewest of expensive elements. Optical aberrations do occur when image points do not get translated back onto single points even after passing through the lens, thus causing image blurring or chromatic aberration which in other words is the misalignment of colours or reduced contrasts as well. Some lenses may suffer from uneven image brightness or distortion.
Focal Length
The angle of view of a lens is determined by its focal length as also is the subject magnification for a particular photographic position. While the Wide angle lenses come with smaller focal lengths, the telephoto lenses come with correspondingly larger focal lengths. Though it is widely perceived that the focal length also goes on to determine an image perspective, but strictly speaking, the image perspective only changes with the location in relation to the subject in question, that is, it changes because you are forced to move further from or closer to the subject. For such scenarios, the wide angle lenses exaggerate or stretch the image perspective while telephoto lenses compress or flatten the same. Perspective control, in photography, proves to be a powerful composition tool and more often than not, it determines the focal length choice. Another interesting fact is that longer focal lengths may require shorter exposure times in order to minimize the blurring caused by hand shakes.
Zoom Lenses, Prime Lenses and Apertures
With a zoom lens, the photographer goes about varying the focal length much within the pre-defined range. The primary advantage of the zoom lens is its ability to achieve a variety of perspectives and compositions, often critical for those dynamic subject matters, such as in children's photography and photojournalism. Zoom lenses increase the overall flexibility and versatility of digital cameras. Why then use the prime lens at all, with restricted options. Because Prime lenses have many advantages such as image quality, cost, weight, speed, light gathering ability and shallow depth of field. Optical zoom is the original, unmanipulated zoom which is the resultant of the focal length change of the lens and provides images as such with natural clarity. Digital zoom is in fact an artificial zoom where the image sizes are enhanced digitally in order to create an impression as that of a longer focal length. Lenses that have larger apertures are considered to be faster and provide brighter images. A smaller aperture indicates a wide range focus, the depth of field and their images have fewer aberrations.
Digital Camera History
February 27, 2010
A Digital Camera is a gadget that captures still photographs or videos or both in the digital format for the electronic processing of images through computers. In today's scenario, digital cameras easily outsell their counterparts, the 35 mm cameras that use photographic film for image capture. The first professional digital camera was commercially released in the market during the year 1991 by Kodak with a 1.3 Mega Pixels image sensor, it was a Nikon F3. The first digital cameras aimed at the consumer level market were the Apple Quicktake 100 in 1994, the Kodak DC-40 and the Casio QV-11 in 1995 and Sony's Cybershot still digital camera in 1996. Kodak, however, takes the cake since it successfully pursued an aggressive marketing campaign with Kinkos, Microsoft, IBM and Hewlett Packard. The marketing strategy worked and the world of digital cameras saw a paradigm shift.
Digital imaging has a long history, though. In the 1950s, televisions and video cameras used the Charged Coupled Device (CCD) to sense the light colours and their intensity. During the 1960s, space probes made use of digital signals for mapping the moon's surface and subsequently sent the digital images back to our earth. This technology was used by spy satellites as well at that time. In the 1970s, the electronic camera without film came into picture. Only in 1981 did the first of the commercial electronic cameras get launched with the Sony Mavica Still Electronic Camera.
But here too, Kodak comes off as a clear winner, since, from the middle of the 70s, Kodak invented several of its solid state image sensors that went on to convert light into digital pictures for both the home consumers and for professional use as well. In 1986, Kodak scientists came out with the world's first megapixels sensor, with a capacity of recording up to 1.4 million pixels and capable of producing 5 x 7 inches prints of digital photo quality. In 1987, Kodak released seven more products for the purpose of recording, storing, transmitting and printing of images in electronic still videos. In 1990, Kodak developed its first Photo CD system that set worldwide standards in terms of defining colour in digital environments. Finally, in 1991, the first digital camera was commercially launched by Kodak.
Panasonic Lumix F3 Digital Camera, unveiled at the CES, 2010
January 17, 2010
Panasonic has unveiled its Lumix F3 Digital Camera at the CES, 2010. This compact digital camera is an entry level gadget that comes with a simple design, stylish looks and stellar performance levels. This digital camera has been specifically designed to suit the frequent and casual user who would want a digicam that is not only stylish, sleeky and small in design, but one that has those sophisticated features for helping and enriching the user's photo taking experience. This digital camera is quite easy to use and just about fits into your pocket nicely while taking high quality videos and photos, in the process.
Panasonic Lumix F3 12 MP Digital Camera features a 12.1 megapixels resolution, 4 x optical zoom and a 2.7 inches LCD screen. It also features an auto scene mode. You can record HD video at a high resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a speed of 30 frames per second. This digital camera is enabled with a high sensitivity CCD image sensor, a wide angle view lens of 28mm and an extra optical zoom. Its LCD is enabled with a high resolution of 230,000 dots for clear viewing of videos and photos while shooting them.
Panasonic Lumix F3 Compact Digital Camera features an auto scene mode that provides shooting assist functions such as intelligent ISO control, face detection and intelligent scene selection. Its digital image stabilizer helps in suppressing handshakes and prevents blurry photos as well. This digital camera is compatible with Windows 7 and supports memory cards. The Panasonic Lumix F3 Digital Camera comes is a high utility gadget that comes in black and silver colours, offers great money value.
