A digital camera or digicam is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital,[1] and while there are still dedicated digital cameras, many more are now incorporated into devices ranging from mobile devices to vehicles.[2] However, high-end, high-definition dedicated cameras are still commonly used by professionals.
Digital and movie cameras share an optical system, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device.[3] 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. However, unlike film cameras, digital cameras can display images on a screen immediately after being recorded, and store and delete images from memory. Many digital cameras can also record moving videos with sound. Some digital cameras can crop and stitch pictures and perform other elementary image editing.
The history of the digital camera began with Eugene F. Lally of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was thinking about how to use a mosaic photosensor to capture digital images. His 1961 idea was to take pictures of the planets and stars while travelling through space to give information about the astronauts' position. As with Texas Instruments employee Willis Adcock's filmless camera (US patent 4,057,830) in 1972, the technology had yet to catch up with the concept.
The Cromemco Cyclops was an all-digital camera introduced as a commercial product in 1975. Its design was published as a hobbyist construction project in the February 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, and it used a 32×32 Metal Oxide Semiconductor sensor.Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, invented and built the first self-contained electronic camera that used a charge-coupled device image sensor in 1975.[4][5][6] Early uses were mainly military and scientific; followed by medical and news applications.[citation needed]
In 1986, Japanese company Nikon introduced the first digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera, the Nikon SVC.[7][8] In the mid-to-late 1990s, DSLR cameras became common among consumers. By the mid-2000s, DSLR cameras had largely replaced film cameras.[citation needed]
In 2000, Sharp introduced the world's first digital camera phone, the J-SH04 J-Phone, in Japan.[9] By the mid-2000s, higher-end cell phones had an integrated digital camera. By the beginning of the 2010s, almost all smartphones had an integrated digital camera