| The first use of digitised images was a device developed by Eugene Lally at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to help astronauts in navigation by periodically recording photos of stars and planets using a mosaic array. Texas Instruments were the first to design a film-less camera in 1972, but Kodak was the first to build one in 1973. It weighed 8 pounds and recorded in black and white to a cassette tape at 10,000 pixels and took 23 seconds to capture the picture.
It wasn’t until 1981 that a handheld electronic camera appeared from Sony. This was an analog camera based upon television technology that recorded to a two inch square video floppy disk. Analog cameras didn’t reach the market place until 1986 with the Canon RC-701. Unfortunately the high cost of about $20,000, poor image quality and lack of affordable printers meant that that they were no competition to the conventional shutter cameras.
In 1988 the first true digital camera that recorded images as a digital computer file was introduced by Fuji. This had a 16MB internal memory that used a battery to keep the data in memory. The camera was never marketed. It was left to the Logitech Fotoman in 1990, to become the first commercially available digital camera. This stored pictures digitally and downloaded to a pc.
Initially digital cameras were low resolution. In 1997 the first megapixel cameras were introduced and by 1999 2.74 megapixel cameras for use by professionals were available from Nikon at a cost of under $6,000. This camera had the advantage of being able to use the Nikon F-mount lens that was used in film cameras. The first digital SLR camera priced under $1,000 was the Cano 300D which boasted a 6 megapixel picture.
There are three methods of capturing the image, single-shot, multi-shot and scanning. The first two methods expose the sensor to the image using filtering mechanisms. The scanning method works in a similar way to a desktop scanner. Recent dramatic improvements in image file processing have made the single-shot camera almost completely predominant in commercial photography as a whole.
The main thing that drives the cost up on digital cameras is the number of megapixels, and the size of the memory buffer. Most cameras have a reasonable amount of both, so you needn't worry. No matter what type of user you are, there is a digital camera for you. Even if you can only afford a very inexpensive digital camera, you will still have nice images, you just might be limited in their maximum size on photo paper, and will have to wait a bit when taking images quickly.
Almost any digital camera is capable of taking pictures for display on the Internet, or for sending across the Internet as email. Images on the Internet are very low resolution -- about 72 to 100 dots per inch -- so any quality digital camera will be capable of making beautiful images for display online. Think carefully about your requirements when choosing the right digicam for your own use.
This article has been written for www.TopDigicam.com by Roger Titley and all copyrights are reserved. It may only be reproduced if this copyright notice and the site link are included.
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