Camera- The basic principle behind its working

Hi friends, you all must have seen cameras in old movies. It used to be like a black-box coveredwith a black cloth. If this is not enough the photographer himself hides behind that cloth! All ofthis was nothing less than ‘bizarre’ when I first saw that scene in a movie.The world has however has come a long way from those days. Now we have small and compactcameras of varying shapes, colors and prices ranges.Now-a-days we have cameras in our cell phones too!
But friends, have you ever wondered how the camera actually work? Well most people don’t bother, nor did I, until recently. But yes it is actually very fascinating to know the working of a camera.Now you must understand that the digital and ordinary camera works completely differently!However contrary to above statement, both types of cameras have a lens working exactly similarly. If we consider a rough block diagram in our mind, then a basic camera consists of a lens system, which is generally convex or bulging outwards. Secondly it also has a recording system. This is where the two types differ.We may use the lenses as we wish. If we have a flat lens, we will be able to get a detail of a small part; in simple words we can get the image of a small object in a larger area. However if we use round or deep lens then we can easily manage to get a bigger view i.e.; in other wordswe can get a larger picture in a smaller place!Now let us see how the cameras store these images. If we consider a simple camera, we have thin and transparent plastic reels (or plastic tape actually) on which the emulsion remainssticking to this plastic tape.The emulsion is made up of light sensitive chemicals made up of a sticky substance called ‘Gelatin’. This gelatin does the work of determining what type of image we will get. The colored film consists of three colors three colors they are ‘Red’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Green’. Once the image is captured (i.e.; imprinted on the film), it is developed. During the developing stage, the colors Green, Blue and Red get converted into Cyan, magenta and yellow! So that we get the images we have in the studios.So suppose you have used a film capable of developing only black and white images then it will only store the intensity of light at various points, when you click the camera, so that we get ashade effect.A digital camera on the other hand uses what is called as a ‘Charged coupled device sensors’or CCD sensors for short. These sensors consist of picture elements and the external electronic circuitry. Whenever the light falls on picture elements or pixels, the electronic circuit stores it in the form, typically in ‘0’ or ‘1’. This data is then stored in a memory device in the form of image file. When this data file is washed, the charged and uncharged particles get separated andwe get the image ( not actual image but the negative, which can then be converted to actual photograph).Now the main question stands is how many picture elements do we have in a CCD sensor? Wellthe answer is simple. A picture element is nothing but ‘pixel’. So the higher the pixels the better is the resolution! And the technology has evolved to a great extent too.Now a day we have all sorts of scanners, video cameras, still cameras which enables us to take images with a great variety. However, this is not all and the technology still keeps developing!