Digital camera

A digital camera (also digicam or camera for short) is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor.
Front and back of Canon PowerShot A95

Many compact digital still cameras can record sound and moving video as well as still photographs. Most 21st century cameras are digital.



Digital cameras can do things film cameras cannot: displaying images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, storing thousands of images on a single small memory device, recording video with sound, and deleting images to free storage space. Some can crop pictures and perform other elementary image editing. The optical system works the same as in film cameras, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device. The diaphragm and shutter admit the correct amount of light to the imager, just as with film but the image pickup device is electronic rather than chemical.



Digital cameras are incorporated into many devices ranging from PDAs and mobile phones (called camera phones) to vehicles. The Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical devices are essentially specialized digital cameras.