How Digital Photography Works, Second Edition

Chapter 7. How Light Becomes Data

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence. All the neurons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion.

Bill Gates

The real difference between a film camera and a digital camera is not how the cameras take pictures, but how they store them. After a picture is stored on film, there is only so much that can be done with it. How the film is processed can change the image—once. Then the picture is frozen in the form of chemical molecules that have clumped together to form microscopic dots of color. There’s no subtle way to manipulate those molecules. Sure, you can ...