Camera:

Introduction:

An optical device that can record an image is a camera. The majority of cameras can take 2D pictures, while some more sophisticated versions can also take 3D pictures. On a fundamental level, most cameras are made up of sealed boxes (the camera body) with a tiny hole (the aperture) that lets light flow through so that it can be collected on a surface that is sensitive to light (usually a digital sensor or photographic film). Different techniques are used by cameras to regulate how light strikes the light-sensitive surface. The light entering the camera is focused by lenses, and the aperture can be broadened or shrunk. The length of time the photosensitive surface is exposed to light is controlled by a shutter mechanism.

 

Camera

The primary tool in photography is the still-image camera. Images that have been captured may later be reproduced using photography, digital imaging, or photographic printing. Film, videography, and cinematography are related artistic disciplines in the moving-image camera domain.

 

The earliest apparatus for projecting a 2D picture onto a flat surface, known in Latin as a camera obscura, is where the word camera originates (literally translated to "dark chamber"). The camera obscura gave rise to the contemporary photographic camera. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce created the first ever lasting photograph in 1825.

 

Digital cameras:

The main way that digital cameras vary from their analogue counterparts is that they don't use film; instead, they take and store pictures on internal or external digital memory cards. Chemical cameras are only used in specialised markets due to their cheap running costs. Digital cameras are increasingly frequently found on mobile phones and have wireless communication capabilities (such Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) for photo transmission, printing, and sharing.

 

Digital imaging technology:

Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith of Bell Labs created the CCD, the first semiconductor image sensor, in 1969. They discovered, while studying MOS technology, that an electric charge could be held on a tiny MOS capacitor and was akin to the magnetic bubble. They connected a sufficient voltage to them in order to step the charge from one to the next because it was relatively simple to construct a row of MOS capacitors. The first digital video cameras for television transmission used a semiconductor circuit called a CCD.

 

Olympus developed the NMOS active-pixel sensor (APS) in Japan in the middle of the 1980s. This was made possible by developments in the manufacturing of MOS semiconductor devices, with MOSFET scaling to micron- and subsequently sub-micron levels. Tsutomu Nakamura's team of Olympus created the NMOS APS in 1985. Later, in 1993, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory team led by Eric Fossum created the CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor).

 

Prototypes of early digital cameras:

The idea of creating still images by digitising signals from a variety of separate sensor parts predates the idea of digitising images on scanners and video signals. Early spy satellites employed the incredibly time-consuming and expensive technique of film canister de-orbiting and aerial retrieval. By using in-satellite development and electronic scanning of the film for immediate transmission to the ground, technology was pushed to avoid these processes. The drive to create an electronic picture capturing array that could be utilised in place of film helped to overcome and substantially simplify the amount of film that was still a significant limitation. The KH-11 spacecraft, launched by the NRO in late 1976, was the first electronic imaging satellite.It included a charge-coupled device (CCD) array with an 800 x 800 pixel resolution (0.64 megapixels). On September 6, 1968, Edward Stupp, Pieter Cath, and Zsolt Szilagyi created a flat-screen target for receiving and storing an optical image on a matrix made of an array of photodiodes connected to a capacitor to form an array of two terminal devices connected in rows and columns. They then filed for a patent on "All Solid State Radiation Imagers" at Philips Labs in New York. On November 10th, 1970, a US patent was given to them. Willis Adcock, a Texas Instruments engineer, created a filmless camera that was not digital and submitted a patent application in 1972, although it is unknown if the camera was ever constructed.

 

Camera

The Cromemco Cyclops was the first digital camera to be connected to a microcomputer, debuting in 1975 as a hobbyist DIY project. Its image sensor was a dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory chip made of modified metal-oxide semiconductors (MOS).

 

Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, made the first known attempt to create a standalone digital camera in 1975. It made use of the brand-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips that Fairchild Semiconductor had created in 1973 at the time.  The camera had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black-and-white photographs to a compact cassette tape, and took 23 seconds to take its first picture in December 1975. The prototype camera was created as a test for technical purposes alone.

 

Analog electronic cameras:

With the introduction of the Sony Mavica in 1981, the concept of portable electronic cameras—i.e., a device designed to be carried and used as a handheld film camera—began to take shape (Magnetic Video Camera). This should not be confused with the subsequent Sony cameras that also used the name Mavica. This camera was analogue in the sense that it recorded television-type signals to a 2 2 inch "video floppy" while continuously recording pixel signals, much like videotape recorders did. It was essentially a video movie camera that could record 25 frames per disc in frame mode and 50 frames per disc in field mode. It was believed that the image quality was comparable to that of then-current televisions.

 

The Canon RC-701 appears to have been the first analogue electronic camera to hit the market in 1986. At the 1984 Summer Olympics, Canon displayed a prototype of this design and published the photographs in the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shinbun. In the US, USA Today was the first outlet to deploy these cameras for legitimate reporting while covering the World Series baseball.The price (up to $20,000, equal to $49,000 in 2021), the inferior image quality compared to film, and the scarcity of high-quality, affordable printers all prevented analogue cameras from becoming widely used. Originally, in order to capture and print an image, one needed access to tools like frame grabbers, which were out of the price range of the typical customer. The "video floppy" discs were never standardised as a computer drive but later had a number of reader devices available for viewing on a screen.

 

Early users mostly worked in the news media, where the utility and ability to broadcast photos over telephone lines made up for the cost. The newspaper graphics' low resolution helped to make up for the poor image quality. Having the ability to broadcast photographs without a satellite link was helpful in 1991 during the first Gulf War and in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

 

The still video concept attracted a lot of interest from US government organisations as well, particularly the US Navy for use as a real-time air-to-sea surveillance system.

 

The Casio VS-101 may have been the first analogue electronic camera sold to consumers in 1987. The Nikon QV-1000C, which was a significant analogue camera released in the same year but only sold a small number of units because it was solely intended for press usage. It captured photographs in grayscale, and newspaper prints had the same quality as those from film cameras. It looked very much like a contemporary digital single-lens reflex camera. Video floppy discs were used to store images.

 

It was announced in late 1998 that silicon film, a proposed digital sensor cartridge for film cameras, would enable 35 mm cameras to take digital pictures without any change. With a 1.3 megapixel sensor behind the lens and a battery and storage device that fit in the film holder of the camera, Silicon Film was designed to function like a roll of 35 mm film. The product, which was never made available, lost value as digital cameras got more advanced and affordable. In 2001, the parent business of Silicon Films declared bankruptcy.

 

Early true digital cameras:

The necessary technology to create genuinely commercial digital cameras was available by the late 1980s. The Fuji DS-1P from 1988, which recorded images to a 2 MB SRAM (static RAM) memory card and utilised a battery to retain the data in memory, was probably the first truly portable digital camera to capture photos as a computerised file. The public was never advertised with this camera.

 

The MegaVision Tessera may have been the first commercially available digital camera of any kind, albeit there isn't much evidence of its sales to date. In December 1989, Fuji introduced the DS-X, the first portable digital camera that was really commercially marketed, in Japan. The Dycam Model 1 was the country's first commercially available portable digital camera when it was first delivered in November 1990. Because it was black and white, had poor resolution, and cost close to $1,000 (which would be $2,100 in 2021) it was initially a commercial failure. When it was eventually resold as the Logitech Fotoman in 1992, it had a minor amount of success. It had a CCD image sensor, digitally saved the photos, and a direct computer connection for downloading.

 

Digital SLRs (DSLRs):

Since the mid-1980s, Nikon has been interested in digital photography. An functioning prototype of the first SLR-type digital camera (Still Video Camera), made by Panasonic, was unveiled by Nikon in 1986 at a presentation at Photokina. A sensor with a 2/3" charge-coupled device and 300,000 pixels served as the foundation for the Nikon SVC. Depending on the definition, the camera's magnetic floppy storage medium can save 25 or 50 B&W pictures. The Nikon QV-1000C, the first commercial DSLR camera, was introduced in 1988.

 

The first in a long line of professional Kodak DCS SLR cameras that were partly based on film bodies, frequently Nikons, was the Kodak DCS (Kodak Digital Camera System), which Kodak introduced to the market in 1991. Priced at $13,000 (about $26,000 in 2021), it had a 1.3 megapixel sensor, a large external digital storage system, and it had these features. The Kodak DCS was renamed Kodak DCS-100 upon the launch of the Kodak DCS-200.

 

The development of the first JPEG and MPEG standards in 1988, which enabled picture and video files to be compressed for storage, aided the transition to digital formats. The Casio QV-10, created in 1995 by a team under the direction of Hiroyuki Suetaka, was the first consumer camera with a liquid crystal display on the rear. The Kodak DC-25 was the first camera to support CompactFlash in 1996. The Ricoh RDC-1 camera from 1995 may have been the first to allow users to capture short video clips.

 

A splitter and three separate CCDs were added to the Minolta 500si SLR to create the RD-175, which was debuted by Minolta in 1995. Together, they produced 1.75M pixels. The advantage of employing an SLR base was that any existing Minolta AF mount lens could be used. The Nikon D1, which had 2.74 megapixels and cost less than $6,000 (about $10,700 in 2021), was introduced in 1999. It was the first digital SLR designed totally from the ground up by a major manufacturer. Professional photographers and high-end consumers could buy it. Additionally, this camera was compatible with Nikon F-mount lenses, allowing film photographers to use many of their existing lenses.

 

Sales of digital cameras increased significantly as a result of technological advancements. Compact Digital Still Cameras, Bridge Cameras, Mirrorless Compacts, and Digital SLRs are some of the different categories that make up the digital market.

 

Since 2003, digital cameras have outsold film cameras. Kodak declared in January 2004 that it would stop selling Kodak-branded film cameras in the developed world. After struggling to adjust to the changing industry, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

 

Camera phones:

The Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210, which was made available in Japan in May 1999, was the very first commercial camera phone. It possessed a front-facing camera with 110,000 pixels and was referred to as a "mobile videophone" at the time. It could transfer up to two photos per second over Japan's Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) cellular network and store up to 20 JPEG digital images that could be sent via email. One of the earliest cell phones with a built-in camera was the Samsung SCH-V200, which was introduced in South Korea in June 2000. It included a TFT liquid crystal display (LCD) and could hold up to 20 350,000 pixel digital photographs.

 

Camera

It needed a computer connection to view images, but it was unable to deliver the final image over the telephone feature. The J-SH04, a Sharp J-Phone model that went on sale in Japan in November 2000, was the first camera phone for the mainstream market. It was capable of wirelessly transmitting images in a millisecond.

 

One of the biggest technological advancements was the creation of CMOS sensors, which contributed to lowering sensor costs to a point where camera phones could be widely used. Nowadays, smartphones frequently come equipped with high-resolution cameras.