Lesson 1 : What is Digital Photography?
Welcome to PHOTO 100 Introduction to Photography. We will be exploring Digital Photography. You will learn technical and creative concepts involved in Digital Photography and you will create your own photos and post them. For this you will need some form of digital camera. A camera phone is sufficient but if you have a digital camera, that is preferred. If you have a digital camera you will be able to have hands-on practice with many of the technical concepts we will explore such as aperture, shutter speed, and lenses. If not, you will still learn of these concepts and hopefully develop an understanding and appreciation of the wonderful world of digital photography. And hopefully you will enjoy the journey and have FUN!
This first lesson is an exploration of what is digital photography.
In order to begin to understand we must first understand what photography is. There are many definitions of photography but they all center on the concept of recording light. Wikipedia defines as “the science, art and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.”
Photography first started as the recording of light through a lens onto paper coated with silver based material (film) which was then further chemically processed to produce a photo print. This was film photography which required specialized materials to record the image and both chemicals and other light sensitive materials to produce prints in a darkroom. Read more at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
http://photography.about.com/od/historyofphotography/a/photohistory.htm
Digital photography records light using electronic sensors instead of photo-reactive film. Wikipedia defines “Digital photography is a form of photography that uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors to capture images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The captured images are digitized and stored as a computer file ready for further digital processing, viewing, digital publishing or printing.” Today’s digital cameras have sensors in various sizes and density. The most common form of measurement of digital camera sensors is megapixels which is a measure of the number of individual sensors which record an element of light in an image. A Nikon D3300 camera with 24.2 Megapixels has 24.2 million individual photo receptors to capture an image. Since it is a 2D image its length and width are 6000 by 4000 pixels (6000 across vertically and 4000 horizontal into a full 24,000,000 pixel array. The sheer number of megapixels is not the only physical factor which determines image quality however. The actual physical dimensions of the sensor itself significantly affect image quality. According to Snapsort “The sensor size is the physical dimensions of the cameras image sensor. This is the heart of the digital camera, this is essentially your “film”. Typically the larger the sensor the better. Larger sensors permit more light per pixel permitting lower noise and higher quality conversion of light to a RGB value that is most accurate and contains the highest range of contrast and color depth.” Higher priced cameras may have similar megapixels than smaller, less expensive cameras but smaller cameras may have much smaller physical image sensors. These will significantly impact the quality of images you can produce from these cameras or cellphones. Cameras with larger sensors are generally much more expensive, have larger sensors and produce higher quality images. As they say, you get what you pay for. The image below shows differences in image sensor sizes.
Please read more about the topics here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_photography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel
http://snapsort.com/learn/sensor/size
Assignment:
Activity
• Search the Internet for websites or articles on digital photography. Post a summary of the article or website in the Yammer Blog post. Also post the link for the article. The summary should be at least 100 words long.