Digital file formats

In case of the functioning of digital cameras, it is immensely significant to remember that unlike the analog cameras, they are not provided with films for storage of pictures and in digital cameras the memory cards act as the storage device. Once the images have been captured the pictures need to be transferred to the computer via the USB port supplied with the camera. The digital camera supports certain image file formats and the computers too support certain specific image file formats and these formatting are very significant in case of further image editing and processing with the use of graphics and other software applications as well. Therefore it can be concluded without a trace of doubt that the image file formats are absolutely essential for arranging and storage of image files. These image files are comprised of various pixels which may be organized in the form of a rectangular grid or even as geometrical figures and the sizes of these files are represented in the form of bytes. The image resolution is also greatly dependent on the pixels and there are various methods like image editing, compression and processing which make use of these file formats.

There are various kind of image file formats and can be broadly divided into the vector and the raster formats. Vector file formats make use of geometrical structures like polygons and curves and they comprise of 3D image files which allow texture mapping of pixel data. There is also the SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics is a vector file formatting designed specifically for the web. The raster graphic file formats store images in the form of bitmaps and includes JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group, the RAW which refers to raw image formats, PNG or Portable Network Graphics, TIFF or Tagged Image File Formats, BMP files or bitmap image formats and GIF or Graphic Interchange Formats.

Digital cameras

Not everyone is blessed with what is often referred to as photographic memory and cameras are integral to human lives as they are the only equipments which can preserve certain special and timeless moments in one’s lives which can remain in his mind as a beautiful recollection of an incident of the past throughout his lifetime. With the advancement of time and technological improvements, cameras have moved on from the older versions which used photographic films which are more or less becoming obsolete nowadays and are being replaced by digital cameras which are electronic equipments where photographs are stored digitally. Since their inception, digital cameras have been extremely popular and at present they constitute the major share in the market.

While experimentations had begun earlier, the first original digital camera came out in the late 1980s and was released by Fuji which performed with the help of a 16MB digital memory card but this never arrived in the markets. This was followed by the Logitech Fotoman which comprised of a CCD image sensor and could be attached to a PC for transfer of photos. In fact all digital cameras are supplied with these CCD image sensors which are made up of several color buckets, also known as pixels each of which represent three colors and all of these buckets or pixels are provided with color filters. The pixel count is usually made in millions and therefore 1 mega pixel refers to 1 million pixels. Almost all the digital cameras allow connectivity facilities to the computer by means of an USB cord. However, with mobile phone cameras like Blackberry which also use digital technology becoming popular with every passing day, it is also possible to transfer photos via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi networking. The common image file formats supported by most digital cameras include the TIFF and JPEG formats. Video footage is supported by MPEG, AVI, MOV etc formats and is available in selected devices like camcorders.