So as noted previously, there are two types of primary sensors we would be
interested in looking at, film versus digital.
There's a long-term debate that has been going on between film versus digital,
use of either film or digital in cameras.
I'm not going to get into that religious debate, to me that debate has,
similar feeling, as a debate between digital music or through vinyl recordings.
We will look at both of them.
Film usually comes in canisters like this.
You've seen different formats of this.
For digital, basically what we need is some sort of a storage media.
Here I'm just showing you some generic forms of,
flash disk that are not commonly used in, cameras.
I'm going to make a claim that film and
digital cameras are practically the same.
For example, if I showed you this camera, this large camera here, again,
a digit, this is an SLR camera.
Or, I showed you this camera.
Both of them look exactly the same.
Both of them have you know, the shutter.
They have lenses.
And this is a single lens reflex camera, which basically means if
I was to open this up, and put this right here, you can see it has a mirror,
and if the mirror pops up, there should be a sensor behind it.
And, of course, the shutter controls how the shutter would open.
And the mirror is moved up and,
of course, the optics of the lens here are also the same.
So in essence, hopefully you'll agree with me,
that both cameras have pretty much the same form factor.
Of course, you may be arguing with me that, oh, things are really different now.
For example let's say,
you know, I bring in a cell phone which has a camera here.
This is a complete change in thinking about how photography's done, or
let's look at, for example, an instamatic kind of camera here.
This, of course, is a digital one.
But if you look at all instamatic cameras,
they pretty much have the same form factor lens sensor, which could be film,
and in this case, of course, if you look at it, the film is not there.
And, of course, we have is a small disc.
So this whole thing basically suggests that cameras are still alike, in their,
you know, kind of the whole form factor that we've seen them for a long time.
They've just gotten smaller and
also have a lot more different types of functionalities.
I will admit that with the innovations there have been
significant improvements in actuators and lenses.
Lens quality, of course, in the old days, was very good and is still very good.
But the actuators, the motors that are come in,
are actually much better than they ever used to be.
Furthermore, the sensors and stuff that we use in cameras now may not
have the same kinds of fidelity as film.
But of course, instant gratification.
We get pictures the moment we take 'em, and we see them right away.
The bottom line with all cameras, in general, is there is no difference in how
light is transported through the lens, but it's how it's trapped and preserved.
So the whole process of how it's sensed, trapped, and
preserved, either in film or in digital form, is what's changed.
For film, basically, there's a chemical process.
For digital, basically, it's the electronic process of how light energy is
converted to electronic signals, which are then saved as digital signals and
then are converted into pixels.
In case of film, it's a chemical process that converts light energy and
preserves it in a format that basically can be saved on film.
I, I had earlier already shown you this camera that I have popped open.
And it had a film in it, like right here.
Basically I navel, I know it's an exposed film.
But basically, that's what we have in old traditional cameras,
a thin frame here.
I'm not going to take it out right now.
So here you basically just see the film.
I've, of course, exposed it.
But that's basically in a canister and,
of course, basically it goes through as soon as I take a shot.
I forward the film, and I expose the next one.
This is, of course, the film taken out of the camera.
This is exposed but not developed film.
After a film is exposed in the camera, you take it to a darkroom, and
then other chemical processes are added to develop to be able to
get the images out in the negative format that we have seen before.
I'm sure all of you have played around with negatives and
have seen them in person.
So the bottom line is,
we have a canister, we have digital format in form of a disk, right now.