Subtitles of the Movie

Now when you understand the way a digital camera works it'll be a lot easier for you to understand how to get the best image possible out of your camera and subsequently, the best out of Elements, so, let's begin with Digital Cameras 101. Now a digital camera captures a light image with what's called a sensor. Now the sensor has millions of tiny light-gathering diodes on it called photons or pixels. Now these photons are sensitive to different colors of light, either blue, red, or green. Now when the light strikes these photons a signal is sent to what's called an Analog to Digital Converter that changes the visible light to digital signals in the form of bits and bytes. Now this information is then stored on the compact flash card in your camera and ready for you to view or download to your computer for processing and printing. These are the typical sensor sizes in various digital cameras. In high-end DSLRs they are as large as, or only slightly smaller than, a standard 35 millimeter film negative or slide as shown by the white, blue, and red outlines. Now the sensor in the middle, shown in the yellow outline, from a typical compact digital camera shows the difference in size between expensive digital SLRs and substantially less expensive compact digital cameras, and you can see here that the compact digital cameras are only a fraction of the size of the larger DSLRs. Accordingly, the photons, or light-capturing diodes, are also proportionately smaller, which means they can only capture a fraction of the light that the larger sensors can capture. This is why the smaller digital cameras had limited range and lighting situations in which to take a good picture. The other difference can be readily seen when you compare the lenses of a larger DSLR, shown here on the left, and of course, the smaller compact digital camera on the right. Now the lenses are smaller, which also reduces the amount of light striking the surface of the sensor. The smaller the camera, the smaller the sensor, and the smaller the photons that collect the light. So even though your camera may say it's got a resolution of 8 megapixels, an 8-megapixel compact digital is much different and limited in its potential use than an 8-megapixel DSLR with larger sensors and photons. So, what's the lesson? Well in digital cameras you get exactly what you pay for. The more expensive the camera the better the image. The other lesson therefore is that you should buy the most expensive camera you can afford for the best possible image. Now this does not mean that the smaller digital compact cameras cannot take a good picture. They most certainly can, but usually only under outdoor lighting situations or in flash situations where the subject is no more than 10 feet away and in these conditions the compact cameras can do a very good job. Now stay with me. In the next lesson I'm going to explain resolution and why you should care.