Advances in Digital Camera Technology

Digital Photography has been around for a good few years now and the days of film cameras must surely be numbered. Of course there will always be those who do not want to embrace the 'new' thing, but for most 'digital photography' is the only way forward. There is a continual advancing of technology in the digital camera field and I have noted a few of the newer concepts below.

[b]Digital Camera [/b]

Megapixel count

Not too long ago (a few years) my 1.3mp digital camera seemed to do the trick and took some good photographs which I could print out on A4 paper. As time went by the amount of megapixels on cameras started to rise and 5mp was considered really good. The camera I use now has 6mp and does a great job. However, the megapixel count used in dslr cameras continues to grow and the standard amount has now gone past 10mp to 12mp and some have 15mp or even 20mp!! When will it end, or will it??

It is said that you should buy a camera that has at least 6mp and I think that if you can afford one that has 10-12mp you have the capability to take really great photos which can be enlarged quite substantially without any loss of quality.

Camera shake reduction

This is a fairly recent addition to digital cameras and works really well when you find that hand movements start to cause camera shake as you go to take a picture. There are 2 main methods of providing the shake reduction. One is to have the mechanism in the lens being used, and the other to have it in the camera body itself. If using a camera body which has the shake reduction  incorporated within then that means that it can be used with any lens whereas if using stabilised lenses each lens used on the camera would need to have it. 

Sensor self-cleaning

The heart of the digital camera is the sensor and eventually some dust will find its way onto it. There are many solutions given for this for cameras which have no self cleaning mechanism.

Microscopic dust particles can get on your digital SLR sensor when you remove the camera lens. This dust shows up in every photo that you take. Self-cleaning sensors vibrate to prevent and eliminate  digital SLR sensor dust. This self cleaning was added a few years ago and does away with the need to remove lenses and get cleaning materials etc. to remove the dust which can be very awkward for the aspiring photographer.

Live View

This is where you can get a view of the intended photograph on the large LCD window on the back of the camera in contrast to being able to look through the viewfinder.

For many years the function of live view was the feature of all compact digital cameras. There was no popular SLR with this function. That has now changed and a few of the main manufacturers are introducing it to their SLR ranges.

JPEG & RAW capability

JPEG  is probably the most popular type of image used on digital cameras now. One of the drawbacks is that it is a lousy image which means that you get degradation of the photo the more cropping and resizing is done on it. RAW on the other hand is the digital equivalent of the old 'negative' and allows far more scope for adjustment on the photograph. RAW files are big and can take up a fair amount of room, so large storage mediums are essential. One good thing that a few of the better digital SLR's have is the ability to take a RAW and JPEG file of each photo you take. This gives you the option of keeping the JPEG as is or doing some work on the RAW image as required.

These are some of the more recent innovations to DSLR cameras. There undoubtedly will be more and it will be interesting to see the next few advances in the technology in the foreseeable future.

Advances in Digital Camera Technology