Photography

Photography (IPA: [fә'tɒgrәfi] or IPA: [fә'tɑːgrәfi][1]) (from Greek φωτο and γραφία) is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a sensitive medium, such as a film, or an electronic sensor. Light patterns reflected or emitted from objects activate a sensitive chemical or electronic sensor during a timed exposure, usually through a photographic lens in a device known as a camera that also stores the resulting information chemically or electronically. Photography has many uses for business, science, art and pleasure.

Lens and mounting of a large-format camera.

A historic camera: the Contax S of 1949 — the first pentaprism SLR.

Nikon F of 1959 — the first 35mm film system camera.
The word "photography" comes from the Greek φώς (phos) "light" + γραφίς (graphis) "stylus", "paintbrush" or γραφή (graphê) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light." Traditionally, the products of photography have been called negatives and photographs, commonly shortened to photos.
The discipline of making lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for the cinema is dealt with under Cinematography
Photographic cameras
The camera or camera obscura is the image-forming device, and photographic film or a silicon electronic image sensor is the sensing medium. The respective recording medium can be the film itself, or a digital electronic or magnetic memory.
Photographers control the camera and lens to "expose" the light recording material (such as film) to the required amount of light to form a "latent image" (on film) or "raw file" (in digital cameras) which, after appropriate processing, is converted to a usable image. Digital cameras replace film with an electronic image sensor based on light-sensitive electronics such as charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The resulting digital image is stored electronically, but can be reproduced on paper or film.
The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images, each called a "frame". This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second). While viewing, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to create the illusion of motion.[2]
In all but certain specialized cameras, the process of obtaining a usable exposure must involve the use, manually or automatically, of a few controls to ensure the photograph is clear, sharp and well illuminated. The controls usually include but are not limited to the following:
Focus - the adjustment to place the sharpest focus where it is desired on the subject.
Aperture – adjustment of the iris, measured as f-number, which controls the amount of light passing through the lens. Aperture also has an effect on focus and depth of field, namely, the smaller the opening aperture, the less light but the greater the depth of field--that is, the greater the range within which objects appear to be sharply focused. The current focal length divided by the f-number gives the actual aperture size in millimeters.
Shutter speed – adjustment of the speed (often expressed either as fractions of seconds or as an angle, with mechanical shutters) of the shutter to control the amount of time during which the imaging medium is exposed to light for each exposure. Shutter speed may be used to control the amount of light striking the image plane; 'faster' shutter speeds (that is, those of shorter duration) decrease both the amount of light and the amount of image blurring from motion of the subject and/or camera.
White balance – on digital cameras, electronic compensation for the color temperature associated with a given set of lighting conditions, ensuring that white light is registered as such on the imaging chip and therefore that the colors in the frame will appear natural. On mechanical, film-based cameras, this function is served by the operator's choice of film stock or with color correction filters. In addition to using white balance to register natural coloration of the image, photographers may employ white balance to aesthetic end, for example white balancing to a blue object in order to obtain a warm color temperature.
Metering – measurement of exposure so that highlights and shadows are exposed according to the photographer's wishes. Many modern cameras meter and set exposure automatically. Before automatic exposure, correct exposure was accomplished with the use of a separate light metering device or by the photographer's knowledge and experience of gauging correct settings. To translate the amount of light into a usable aperture and shutter speed, the meter needs to adjust for the sensitivity of the film or sensor to light. This is done by setting the "film speed" or ISO sensitivity into the meter.
ISO speed – traditionally used to "tell the camera" the film speed of the selected film on film cameras, ISO speeds are employed on modern digital cameras as an indication of the system's gain from light to numerical output and to control the automatic exposure system. A correct combination of ISO speed, aperture, and shutter speed leads to an image that is neither too dark nor too light.
Auto-focus point – on some cameras, the selection of a point in the imaging frame upon which the auto-focus system will attempt to focus. Many Single-lens reflex cameras (SLR) feature multiple auto-focus points in the viewfinder.
Many other elements of the imaging device itself may have a pronounced effect on the quality and/or aesthetic effect of a given photograph; among them are:
Focal length and type of lens (telephoto or "long" lens, macro, wide angle, fisheye, or zoom)
Filters placed between the subject and the light recording material, either in front of or behind the lens
Inherent sensitivity of the medium to light intensity and color/wavelengths.
The nature of the light recording material, for example its resolution as measured in pixels or grains of silver halide.

[edit] Controlling the photographic exposure and rendering

A photographer using a flash.
Camera controls are inter-related. The total amount of light reaching the film plane (the "exposure") changes with the duration of exposure, aperture of the lens, and, the effective focal length of the lens (which in variable focal length lenses, can change as the lens is zoomed). Changing any of these controls can alter the exposure. Many cameras may be set to adjust most or all of these controls automatically. This automatic functionality is useful for occasional photographers in many situations.
The duration of an exposure is referred to as shutter speed, often even in cameras that don't have a physical shutter, and is typically measured in fractions of a second. Aperture is expressed by an f-number or f-stop (derived from focal ratio), which is proportional to the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the aperture. If the f-number is decreased by a factor of , the aperture diameter is increased by the same factor, and its area is increased by a factor of 2. The f-stops that might be found on a typical lens include 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, where going up "one stop" (using lower f-stop numbers) doubles the amount of light reaching the film, and stopping down one stop halves the amount of light.
Exposures can be achieved through various combinations of shutter speed and aperture. For example, f/8 at 8 ms (=1/125th of a second) and f/5.6 at 4 ms (=1/250th of a second) yield the same amount of light. The chosen combination has an impact on the final result. In addition to the subject or camera movement that might vary depending on the shutter speed, the aperture (and focal length of the lens) determine the depth of field, which refers to the range of distances from the lens that will be in focus. For example, using a long lens and a large aperture (f/2.8, for example), a subject's eyes might be in sharp focus, but not the tip of the nose. With a smaller aperture (f/22), or a shorter lens, both the subject's eyes and nose can be in focus. With very small apertures, such as pinholes, a wide range of distance can be brought into focus.
Image capture is only part of the image forming process. Regardless of material, some process must be employed to render the latent image captured by the camera into the final photographic work. This process consists of two steps, development and printing.
During the printing process, modifications can be made to the print by several controls. Many of these controls are similar to controls during image capture, while some are exclusive to the printing process. Most controls have equivalent digital concepts, but some create different effects. For example, dodging and burning controls are different between digital and film processes. Other printing modifications include:
Chemicals and process used during film development
Duration of exposure – equivalent to shutter speed
Printing aperture – equivalent to aperture, but has no effect on depth of field
Contrast
Dodging – reduces exposure of certain print areas, resulting in lighter areas
Burning in – increases exposure of certain areas, resulting in darker areas
Paper texture – glossy, matte, etc
Paper type – resin-coated (RC) or fiber-based (FB)
Paper size
Toners – used to add warm or cold tones to black and white prints

[edit] Uses of photography
Photography gained the interest of many scientists and artists from its inception. Scientists have used photography to record and study movements, such as Eadweard Muybridge's study of human and animal locomotion in 1887. Artists are equally interested by these aspects but also try to explore avenues other than the photo-mechanical representation of reality, such as the pictorialist movement. Military, police, and security forces use photography for surveillance, recognition and data storage. Photography is used by amateurs to preserve memories of favorite times, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment. Many mobile phones now contain cameras to facilitate such use.
Commercial advertising relies heavily on photography and has contributed greatly to its development.

[edit] History of photography
Main article: History of photography

Nicéphore Niépce's earliest surviving photograph of a scene from nature, c. 1826. This image required an eight-hour exposure, which resulted in sunlight being visible on both sides of the buildings.
Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries. Long before the first photographs were made, Chinese philosopher Mo Ti described a pinhole camera in the 5th century B.C.E,[3] Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965–1040) studied the camera obscura and pinhole camera,[4][3] Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) discovered silver nitrate, and Georges Fabricius (1516–1571) discovered silver chloride.[citation needed] Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568.[citation needed] Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694.[citation needed] The fiction book Giphantie, by French author Tiphaigne de la Roche, described what can be interpreted as photography.[citation needed]
Photography as a usable process goes back to the 1820s with the development of chemical photography. The first permanent photograph was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce. However, the picture took eight hours to expose, so he went about trying to find a new process. Working in conjunction with Louis Daguerre, they experimented with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light. Niépce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work, eventually culminating with the development of the daguerreotype in 1837. Daguerre took the first ever photo of a person in 1839 when whilst taking a daguerrotype of a paris street a pedestrian happened to stop long enough to be captured by the the long exposure (several minutes). Eventually, France agreed to pay Daguerre a pension for his formula, in exchange for his promise to announce his discovery to the world as the gift of France, which he did in 1839.
Meanwhile, Hercules Florence had already created a very similar process in 1832, naming it Photographie, and William Fox Talbot had earlier discovered another means to fix a silver process image but had kept it secret. After reading about Daguerre's invention, Talbot refined his process so that portraits were made readily available to the masses. By 1840, Talbot had invented the calotype process, which creates negative images. John Herschel made many contributions to the new methods. He invented the cyanotype process, now familiar as the "blueprint". He was the first to use the terms "photography", "negative" and "positive". He discovered sodium thiosulphate solution to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery in 1839 that it could be used to "fix" pictures and make them permanent. He made the first glass negative in late 1839.
In March 1851, Frederick Scott Archer published his findings in "The Chemist" on the wet plate collodion process. This became the most widely used process between 1852 and the late 1880s when the dry plate was introduced. There are three subsets to the Collodion process; the Ambrotype (positive image on glass), the Ferrotype or Tintype (positive image on metal) and the negative which was printed on Albumen or Salt paper.
Many advances in photographic glass plates and printing were made in through the nineteenth century. In 1884, George Eastman developed the technology of film to replace photographic plates, leading to the technology used by film cameras today.
In 1908 Gabriel Lippmann won the Nobel Laureate in Physics for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference, also known as the Lippmann plate.

[edit] Photographic processes

(wratten #25) to enhance or diminish the rendering of certain light wavelengths.

[edit] Black-and-white photography
See also: Monochrome Photography
All photography was originally monochrome, most of these photographs were black-and-white. Even after color film was readily available, black-and-white photography continued to dominate for decades, due to its lower cost and its "classic" photographic look. It is important to note that some monochromatic pictures are not always pure blacks and whites, but also contain other hues depending on the process. The Cyanotype process produces an image of blue and white for example. The albumen process which was used more than 150 years ago had brown tones.
Many photographers continue to produce some monochrome images. Some full color digital images are processed using a variety of techniques to create black and whites, and some cameras have even been produced to exclusively shoot monochrome.

[edit] Color photography
Main article: Color photography
Color photography was explored beginning in the mid 1800s. Early experiments in color could not fix the photograph and prevent the color from fading. The first permanent color photo was taken in 1861 by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

Early color photograph taken by Prokudin-Gorskii (1915).
One of the early methods of taking color photos was to use three cameras. Each camera would have a color filter in front of the lens. This technique provides the photographer with the three basic channels required to recreate a color image in a darkroom or processing plant. Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii developed another technique, with three color plates taken in quick succession.
Practical application of the technique was held back by the very limited color response of early film; however, in the early 1900s, following the work of photo-chemists such as H. W. Vogel, emulsions with adequate sensitivity to green and red light at last became available.
The first color plate, Autochrome, invented by the French Lumière brothers, reached the market in 1907. It was based on a 'screen-plate' filter made of dyed dots of potato starch, and was the only color film on the market until German Agfa introduced the similar Agfacolor in 1932. In 1935, American Kodak introduced the first modern ('integrated tri-pack') color film, Kodachrome, based on three colored emulsions. This was followed in 1936 by Agfa's Agfacolor Neue. Unlike the Kodachrome tri-pack process, the color couplers in Agfacolor Neue were integral with the emulsion layers, which greatly simplified the film processing. Most modern color films, except Kodachrome, are based on the Agfacolor Neue technology. Instant color film was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.
Color photography may form images as a positive transparency, intended for use in a slide projector or as color negatives, intended for use in creating positive color enlargements on specially coated paper. The latter is now the most common form of film (non-digital) color photography owing to the introduction of automated photoprinting equipment.

[edit] Full-spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared photography
Main article: Full spectrum photography
Ultraviolet and infrared films have been available for many decades and employed in a variety of photographic avenues since the 1960s. New technological trends in digital photography have opened a new direction in full spectrum photography, where careful filtering choices across the ultraviolet, visible and infrared lead to new artistic visions.
Modified digital cameras can detect some ultraviolet, all of the visible and much of the near infrared spectrum, as most digital imaging sensors are sensitive from about 350nm to 1000nm. An off-the-shelf digital camera contains an infrared hot mirror filter that blocks most of the infrared and a bit of the ultraviolet that would otherwise be detected by the sensor, narrowing the accepted range from about 400nm to 700nm[5]. Replacing a hot mirror or infrared blocking filter with an infrared pass or a wide spectrally transmitting filter allows the camera to detect the wider spectrum light at greater sensitivity. Without the hot-mirror, the red, green and blue (or cyan, yellow and magenta) colored micro-filters placed over the sensor elements pass varying amounts of ultraviolet (blue window) and infrared (primarily red, and somewhat lesser the green and blue micro-filters).
Uses of full spectrum photography are for fine art photography, geology, forensics & law enforcement, and even some claimed use in ghost hunting.

[edit] Digital photography

A handheld digital camera.

The Nikon D1, the first DSLR to truly compete with, and begin to replace, film cameras in the professional photojournalism and sports photography fields.

Nikon DSLR and scanner, which converts film images to digital

Sony Ericsson K800i camera phone.
Main article: Digital photography
See also: Digital versus film photography
Traditional photography burdened photographers working at remote locations without easy access to processing facilities, and competition from television pressured photographers to deliver images to newspapers with greater speed. Photo journalists at remote locations often carried miniature photo labs and a means of transmitting images through telephone lines. In 1981, Sony unveiled the first consumer camera to use a charge-coupled device for imaging, eliminating the need for film: the Sony Mavica. While the Mavica saved images to disk, the images were displayed on television, and the camera was not fully digital. In 1990, Kodak unveiled the DCS 100, the first commercially available digital camera. Although its high cost precluded uses other than photojournalism and professional photography, commercial digital photography was born.
Digital imaging uses an electronic image sensor to record the image as a set of electronic data rather than as chemical changes on film. The primary difference between digital and chemical photography is that chemical photography resists manipulation because it involves film and photographic paper, while digital imaging is a highly manipulative medium. This difference allows for a degree of image post-processing that is comparatively difficult in film-based photography and permits different communicative potentials and applications.
Digital point-and-shoot cameras have become widespread consumer products, outselling film cameras, and including new features such as video and audio recording. Kodak announced in January 2004 that it would no longer sell reloadable 35 mm cameras in western Europe, Canada and the United States after the end of that year. Kodak was at that time a minor player in the reloadable film cameras market. In January 2006, Nikon followed suit and announced that they will stop the production of all but two models of their film cameras: the low-end Nikon FM10, and the high-end Nikon F6. On May 25, 2006, Canon announced they will stop developing new film SLR cameras.[6]
Camera phones, combined with sites like flickr have lead to a new kind of social photography.
Though most new camera designs are now digital, a new 6*6cm/6*7cm medium format film camera was introduced in 2008 in a cooperation between Fuji and Voigtländer.[7][8]
According to a survey made by Kodak in 2007, 75 percent of professional photographers say they will continue to use film, even though some embrace digital.[9]
According to the U.S. survey results, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of professional photographers prefer the results of film to those of digital for certain applications including:
film’s superiority in capturing more information on medium and large format films (48 percent);
creating a traditional photographic look (48 percent);
capturing shadow and highlighting details (45 percent);
the wide exposure latitude of film (42 percent); and
archival storage (38 percent)
Because photography is popularly synonymous with truth ("The camera doesn't lie."), digital imaging has raised many ethical concerns. Many photojournalists have declared they will not crop their pictures, or are forbidden from combining elements of multiple photos to make "illustrations," passing them as real photographs. Many courts will not accept digital images as evidence because of their inherently manipulative nature and they could be completely fake, do they only take solid evidence. Today's technology has made picture editing relatively simple for even the novice photographer.
Recent changes of in-camera processing allows digital fingerprinting of RAW photos to verify against tampering of digital photos for forensics use.

[edit] Photographic modes of production

[edit] Amateur photography
An amateur photographer is one who practices photography as a hobby and not for profit. The quality of some amateur work is comparable to that of many professionals but may be highly specialised or eclectic in its choice of subjects. Amateur photography is often pre-eminent in photographic subjects which have little prospect of commercial use or reward.

[edit] Commercial photography

Manual shutter control and exposure settings can achieve unusual results.
Commercial photography is probably best defined as any photography for which the photographer is paid for images rather than works of art. In this light money could be paid for the subject of the photograph or the photograph itself. Wholesale, retail, and professional uses of photography would fall under this definition. The commercial photographic world could include:
Advertising photography: photographs made to illustrate and usually sell a service or product. These images are generally done with an advertising agency, design firm or with an in-house corporate design team.
Fashion and glamour photography: This type of photography usually incorporates models. Fashion photography emphasizes the clothes or product, glamour emphasizes the model. Glamour photography is popular in advertising and in men's magazines. Models in glamour photography may be nude, but this is not always the case.
Crime Scene Photography: This type of photography consists of photographing scenes of crime such as robberies and murders. A black and white camera or an infrared camera may be used to capture specific details.
Still life photography usually depicts inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made.
Food photography can be used for editorial, packaging or advertising use. Food photography is similar to still life photography, but requires some special skills.
Editorial photography: photographs made to illustrate a story or idea within the context of a magazine. These are usually assigned by the magazine.
Photojournalism: this can be considered a subset of editorial photography. Photographs made in this context are accepted as a documentation of a news story.
Portrait and wedding photography: photographs made and sold directly to the end user of the images.
Landscape photography: photographs of different locations.
Wildlife photography that demonstrates life of the animals.
Photo sharing: publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online.
The market for photographic services demonstrates the aphorism "one picture is worth a thousand words," which has an interesting basis in the history of photography. Magazines and newspapers, companies putting up Web sites, advertising agencies and other groups pay for photography.
Many people take photographs for self-fulfillment or for commercial purposes. Organizations with a budget and a need for photography have several options: they can employ a photographer directly, organize a public competition, or obtain rights to stock photographs. Photo stock can be procured through traditional stock giants, such as Getty Images or Corbis; smaller microstock agencies, such as Fotolia; or web marketplaces, such as Cutcaster.

[edit] Photography as an art form

Classic Alfred Stieglitz photograph, The Steerage shows unique aesthetic of black and white photos.
During the twentieth century, both fine art photography and documentary photography became accepted by the English-speaking art world and the gallery system. In the United States, a handful of photographers, including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, John Szarkowski, F. Holland Day, and Edward Weston, spent their lives advocating for photography as a fine art. At first, fine art photographers tried to imitate painting styles. This movement is called Pictorialism, often using soft focus for a dreamy, 'romantic' look. In reaction to that, Weston, Ansel Adams, and others formed the f/64 Group to advocate 'straight photography', the photograph as a (sharply focused) thing in itself and not an imitation of something else.
The aesthetics of photography is a matter that continues to be discussed regularly, especially in artistic circles. Many artists argued that photography was the mechanical reproduction of an image. If photography is authentically art, then photography in the context of art would need redefinition, such as determining what component of a photograph makes it beautiful to the viewer. The controversy began with the earliest images "written with light"; Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, and others among the very earliest photographers were met with acclaim, but some questioned if their work met the definitions and purposes of art.
Clive Bell in his classic essay Art states that only "significant form" can distinguish art from what is not art.
“
There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless. What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cezanne? Only one answer seems possible - significant form. In each, lines and colors combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions.
”
On February 14th 2006 Sotheby’s London sold the 2001 photograph "99 Cent II Diptychon" for an unprecedented $3,346,456 to an anonymous bidder making it the most expensive of all time.
Conceptual photography: Photography that turns a concept or idea into a photograph. Even though what is depicted in the photographs are real objects, the subject is strictly abstract.

[edit] Scientific and Forensic photography

Original Tay Bridge from the north showing structure based on towers built from cast iron columns. When enlarged this plate shows a key design flaw in the bridge: the smaller surviving towers were supported by a continuous girder at their tops, while the fallen towers lack this essential reinforcing element.

Fallen Tay Bridge from the north. The two surviving high towers show a gap in their tops.
The camera has a long and distinguished history as a means of recording phenomena from the first use by Daguerre and Fox-Talbot, such as astronomical events (eclipses for example) and small creatures when the camera was attached to the eyepiece of microscopes (in photomicroscopy). The camera also proved useful in recording crime scenes and the scenes of accidents, one of the first applications being at the scene of the Tay Rail Bridge disaster of 1879. The court, just a few days after the accident, ordered James Valentine of Dundee to record the scene using both long distance shots and close-ups of the debris. The set of accident photographs was used in the subsequent court of inquiry so that witnesses could identify pieces of the wreckage, and the technique is now commonplace both at accident scenes and subsequent cases in courts of law. The set of over 50 Tay bridge photographs are of very high quality, being made on large plate cameras with a small aperture and using fine grain emulsion film on a glass plate. When scanned at high resolution, they can be enlarged to show details of the failed components such as broken cast iron lugs and the tie bars which failed to hold the towers in place. They show that the bridge was badly designed, badly built and badly maintained. The methods used in analysing old photographs are known as forensic photography.
Between 1846 and 1852 Charles Brooke invented a technology for the automatic registration of instruments by photography. These instruments included barometers, thermometers, psychrometers, and magnetometers, which recorded their readings by means of an automated photographic process.

[edit] Other photographic image forming techniques
Besides the camera, other methods of forming images with light are available. For instance, a photocopy or xerography machine forms permanent images but uses the transfer of static electrical charges rather than photographic film, hence the term electrophotography. Photograms are images produced by the shadows of objects cast on the photographic paper, without the use of a camera. Objects can also be placed directly on the glass of an image scanner to produce digital pictures.

[edit] Social and cultural implications
There are many ongoing questions about different aspects of photography. In her writing “On Photography” (1977) Susan Sontag discusses concerns about the objectivity of photography. This is a highly debated subject within the photographic community (Bissell, 2000). It has been concluded that photography is a subjective discipline “to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting one’s self into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge, and therefore like power” (Sontag, 1977: p 4). Photographers decide what to take a photo of, what elements to exclude and what angle to frame the photo. Along with the context that a photograph is received in, photography is definitely a subjective form.
Modern photography has raised a number of concerns on its impact on society. The concept of the camera being a 'phallic' tool has been exemplified in a number of Hollywood productions. In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), the camera is presented as a promoter of voyeuristic inhibitions. 'Although the camera is an observation station, the act of photographing is more than passive observing' [Sontag Susan 1977: p 12]. Michal Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) portrays the camera as both sexual and sadistically violent technology that literally kills in this picture and at the same time captures images of the pain and anguish evident on the faces of the female victims.
"The camera doesn't rape or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assasinate- all activities that, unike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment" [Sontag Susan 1977: p 12]
Photography is one of the new media forms that changes perception and changes the structure of society (Levinson, 1997). Further unease has been caused around cameras in regards to desensitization. Fears that disturbing or explicit images are widely accessible to children and society at large have been raised. Particularly, photos of war and pornography are causing a stir. (Sontag). Sontag is concerned that “to photograph is to turn people into objects that can be symbolically possessed”. Desensitization discussion goes hand in hand with debates about censored images. Sontag writes of her concern that the ability to censor pictures means the photographer has the ability to construct reality.

Digital photo frame

A digital photo frame is a picture frame that displays digital photos without the need to print them or use a computer. The digital photo frame may also be able to display the photos on a TV set.

Features
Some digital photo frames can only display JPEG pictures. Most digital photo frames display the photos as a slideshow and usually with an adjustable time interval. They also can send photos to the printer.
However, others support additional multimedia content, including movie clips recorded in a digital camera's movie mode, MPEG video files and/or MP3 audio.
Certain frames can also load pictures over the Internet from RSS feeds, photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa and from e-mail. Such networked models usually support wireless (802.11) connections.
Other ones can display txt files.
Digital photo frames typically display the pictures directly from a camera's memory card, though certain frames also provide internal memory storage. Certain frames allow users to directly upload pictures to the frame's memory via a USB connection. However, few digital photo frames have built-in memory due to the high price of in-built memory.
Some of them also include a rechargeable battery.
Most 7 inch (17.5cm) models show images at 430 x 234 pixels. With some models the width of each landscape image is stretched to achieve an aspect ratio of 16:9, which results in very noticeable distortion.

[edit] Implementation
A digital photo frame consists of three main parts, the LCD-panel, the PCB and the outside frame:
The panel can have either an analog or digital interface and varies in size.
The PCB is the heart of the digital photo frame, as it includes the device's software.

[edit] Security Issues
Some digital photo frames manufactured in China have been discovered with a computer Trojan Horse embedded in their firmware.[1]
The Trojan Horse, which Computer Associates calls Mocmex, recognizes and blocks detection by most security vendor software, as well as the security and firewall mechanisms in Microsoft Windows. Mocmex downloads files and gives them random names, thus requiring a special program to disinfect the PC.

History Camcorder

History

Before the camcorder. This separate portable Betamax recorder and camera arrangement slightly predates the first camcorders
Video cameras were originally designed for broadcasting television images — see television camera. Cameras found in television broadcast centres were extremely large, mounted on special trolleys, and wired to remote recorders located in separate rooms. As technology advanced, miniaturization eventually enabled the construction of portable video-cameras and portable video-recorders.
Prior to the introduction of the camcorder, portable video-recording required two separate devices: a video-camera and a VCR. Specialized models were introduced by both JVC (VHS) and Sony (Umatic & Betamax) to be used for mobile work. The portable VCR consisted of the cassette player/recorder unit, and a television tuner unit. The cassette unit could be detached and carried with the user for video recording. [1] While the camera itself could be quite compact, the fact that a separate VCR had to be carried generally made on-location shooting a two-man job, however the advent of these portable VCRs helped to eliminate the phrase "film at eleven". Rather than wait for the lengthy process of film developing, portable VCRs and video cameras allowed video to be shown during the 6 o'clock news.
In 1982, two events happened that eventually led to the home camcorder boom: JVC introduced the VHS-C format, and Sony released the first professional camcorder named Betacam. VHS-C was essentially VHS with a reduced-size cassette that had been designed for portable VCRs. Sony's Betacam was a standard developed for professional camcorders, which used component video to provide a superior picture. At first, cameramen did not welcome Betacam, because before it, carrying and operating the VCR unit was the work of a video engineer; after Betacam they came to be required to operate both video camera and VCR. However the cable between cameramen and video engineers was eliminated, the freedom of cameramen improved dramatically and Betacam quickly became the standard for both news-gathering and in-studio video editing.
In 1983, Sony released the Betamax-based Betamovie BMC-100P, the first consumer camcorder. A novel technique in the BMC-100P was used to reduce the size of the spinning video head drum, which was then used for many subsequent camcorders. Nevertheless, the unit could not be held with one hand and was typically resting on a shoulder. Some later camcorders were even larger, because the Betamovie models had only optical viewfinders and no playback or rewind capability. Most camcorders were and still are designed for right-handed operation, though a few possessed ambidextrous ergonomics. That same year JVC released its own camcorder using its pre-existing VHS-C format. [2] The VHS-C cassette held enough tape to record 40 or 120 minutes of VHS video, while a mechanical adapter enabled playback of VHS-C videocassettes in home VCRs.
In the meantime, Sony was busy redesigning its Betamax system to create the new Video8 standard, released in 1985. Video8 eliminated the problem of short running time, by using an all-new metal composition video cassette whose 8mm tape width is 33% less than VHS/Betamax tape (~12.7 mm), allowing even further miniaturization in the recorder's tape-transport assembly and cassette media.
Both VHS-C and 8mm video represented a trade-off for the consumer. Although the Video8 and Hi8 camcorders produced quality equal to VHS-C and Super VHS-C camcorders (250/420 lines horizontal), the standard 8 mm cassette had the advantage with up to two hours length (four hours in slow mode). On the down side, since the 8 mm format was incompatible with VHS, 8 mm recordings could not be played in consumers' VHS VCRs. Equally important entry-level VHS-C camcorders were priced less than 8 mm units, and thus neither "won" the war. It became a stalemate. (Side note - In 1986 companies like Panasonic began releasing full-sized VHS/S-VHS camcorders, which offered up to 3 or 9 hours record time, and thus found a niche with videophiles, industrial videographers, and college TV studios.)
In the mid-1990s, the camcorder reached the digital era with the introduction of DV and miniDV. Its cassette media was even smaller than 8 mm media, allowing another size reduction of the tape transport assembly. The digital nature of miniDV also improved audio and video quality over the best of the analog consumer camcorders (SVHS-C, Hi8), although some users still prefer the analog nature of Hi8 and Super VHS-C, since neither of these produce the "background blur" or "mosquito noise" of Digital compression. Variations on the DV camcorder include the Digital8 camcorder and the MPEG2-based DVD camcorder.
The evolution of the camcorder has seen the growth of the camcorder market as price reductions and size reductions make the technology more accessible to a wider audience. When camcorders were first introduced, they were bulky shoulder-operated luggables that cost over $1,500 US dollars[citation needed]. As of 2008[update], an entry-level camcorder fits in the palm of a person's hand and is sold at a retail price of approximately 100 US dollars (http://cameras.pricegrabber.com/camcorders/m/17729872).

[edit] Overview
Camcorders contain 3 major components: lens, imager, and recorder. The lens gathers and focuses light on the imager. The imager (usually a CCD or CMOS sensor on modern camcorders; earlier examples often used vidicon tubes) converts incident light into an electrical signal. Finally, the recorder converts the electric signal into digital video and encodes it into a storable form. More commonly, the optics and imager are referred to as the camera section.

[edit] Lens
The lens is the first component in the light path. The camcorder's optics generally have one or more of the following adjustments:
aperture or iris to regulate the exposure and to control depth of field;
zoom to control the focal length and angle of view;
shutter speed to regulate the exposure and to maintain desired motion portrayal;
gain to amplify signal strength in low-light conditions;
neutral density filter to regulate the exposure.
In consumer units, the above adjustments are often automatically controlled by the camcorder's electronics, but can be adjusted manually if desired. Professional units offer direct user control of all major optical functions.

[edit] Imager
The imager converts light into electric signal. The camera lens projects an image onto the imager surface, exposing the photosensitive array to light. The light exposure is converted into electrical charge. At the end of the timed exposure, the imager converts the accumulated charge into a continuous analog voltage at the imager's output terminals. After scan-out is complete, the photosites are reset to start the exposure-process for the next video frame.
With the first (digital) camcorders, an analog-to-digital (ADC) converter digitized the imager (analog) waveform output into a discrete digital-video signal. The images in these cameras was a CCD which was analogue by nature. Modern cameras will generally have a CMOS chip in place of a CCD as a CMOS is completely digital in nature and there is no analogue voltage signal to digitize because the light is sampled directly by each pixel and converted to a binary digital signal per each pixel.
CCD chips will generally see better in low light conditions because of the CCD's nature of capturing more light in the infrared range, but will severely lack in the human visibility spectrum, thus sacrificing color, on the other hand CMOS imagers do not have great low light capability but will capture the visible spectrum better and thus displaying color properly.

[edit] Recorder
The third section, the recorder, is responsible for writing the video-signal onto a recording medium (such as magnetic videotape.) The record function involves many signal-processing steps, and historically, the recording-process introduced some distortion and noise into the stored video, such that playback of the stored-signal may not retain the same characteristics/detail as the live video feed.
All but the most primitive camcorders imaginable also need to have a recorder-controlling section which allows the user to control the camcorder, switch the recorder into playback mode for reviewing the recorded footage and an image control section which controls exposure, focus and white-balance.
The image recorded need not be limited to what appeared in the viewfinder. For documentation of events, such as used by police, the field of view overlays such things as the time and date of the recording along the top and bottom of the image. Such things as the police car or constable to which the recorder has been allotted may also appear; also the speed of the car at the time of recording. Compass direction at time of recording and geographical coordinates may also be possible. These are not kept to world-standard fields; "month/day/year" may be seen, as well as "day/month/year", besides the ISO standard "year-month-day". And the Danish police have the speed of the police car in the units "km/t" sic (time being Danish for "hour").

[edit] Consumer camcorders

[edit] Analog vs. digital
Camcorders are often classified by their storage device: VHS, Betamax, Video8 are examples of older, videotape-based camcorders which record video in analog form. Newer camcorders include Digital8, miniDV, DVD, Hard drive and solid-state (flash) semiconductor memory, which all record video in digital form. (Please see the digital video page for details.) In older digital camcorders, the imager-chip, the CCD was considered an analog component, so the digital namesake is in reference to the camcorder's processing and recording of the video. Many next generation camcorders use a CMOS imager, which register photons as binary data as soon as the photons hit the imager and thus tightly marrying part 2 and 3.
It should be noted that the take up of digital video storage in camcorders was an enormous milestone. MiniDV storage allows full resolution video (720x576 for PAL,720x480 for NTSC), unlike previous analogue video standards. Digital video doesn't experience colour bleeding, jitter, or fade, although some users still prefer the analog nature of Hi8 and Super VHS-C, since neither of these produce the "background blur" or "mosquito noise" of Digital compression. In many cases, a high-quality analog recording shows more detail (such as rough textures on a wall) than a compressed digital recording (which would show the same wall as flat and featureless). Although, the low resolution of analogue camcorders may negate any such benefits.
The highest-quality digital formats, such as MiniDV and Digital Betacam, have the advantage over analog of suffering little generation loss in recording, dubbing, and editing (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 do suffer from generation loss in the editing process only). Whereas noise and bandwidth issues relating to cables, amplifiers, and mixers can greatly affect analog recordings, such problems are minimal in digital formats using digital connections (generally IEEE 1394, SDI/SDTI, or HDMI).
Although both analog and digital can suffer from archival problems, digital is more prone to complete loss. Theoretically digital information can be stored indefinitely with zero deterioration on a digital storage device (such as a hard drive), however since some digital formats (like miniDV) often squeeze tracks only ~10 micrometers apart (versus ~500 μm for VHS), a digital recording is more vulnerable to wrinkles or stretches in the tape that could permanently erase several scenes worth of digital data, but the additions tracking and error correction code on the tape will generally compensate for most defects. On analog media similar damage barely registers as "noise" in the video, still leaving a deteriorated but watchable video. The only limitation is that this video has to be played on a completely analogue viewing system, otherwise the tape will not display any video due to the damage and sync problems. Even digital recordings on DVD are known to suffer from DVD rot that permanently erase huge chunks of data. Thus the one advantage analog seems to have in this respect is that an analog recording may be "usable" even after the media it is stored on has suffered severe deterioration whereas it has been noticed[1] that even slight media degradation in digital recordings may cause them to suffer from an "all or nothing" failure, i.e. the digital recording will end up being totally un-playable without very expensive restoration work.

[edit] Modern recording media
For more information, see tapeless camcorder.
Some recent camcorders record video on flash memory devices, Microdrives, small hard disks, and size-reduced DVD-RAM or DVD-Rs using MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 formats. However because these codecs use inter-frame compression, frame-specific-editing requires frame regeneration, which incurs additional processing and can cause loss of picture information. (In professional usage, it is common to use a codec that will store every frame inidividually. This provides easier and faster frame-specific editing of scenes.)
Most other digital consumer camcorders record in DV or HDV format on tape and transfer content over FireWire (some also use USB 2.0) to a computer, where the huge files (for DV, 1GB for 4 to 4.6 minutes in PAL/NTSC resolutions) can be edited, converted, and (with many camcorders) also recorded back to tape. The transfer is done in real time, so the complete transfer of a 60 minute tape needs one hour to transfer and about 13GB disk space for the raw footage only - excluding any space needed for render files, and other media. Time spent in post-production (editing) to select and cut the best shots varies from instantaneous "magic" movies to hours of tedious selection, arrangement and rendering.

[edit] Consumer market
As the mainstream consumer market favors ease of use, portability, and price, consumer camcorders emphasize these features more than raw technical performance. For example, good low-light capabilities require large capturing chips, which affects price and size. Thus, consumer camcorders are often unable to shoot useful footage in dim light (though some units, particularly single-chip units by Sony, offer night vision capability) which utilizes the infrared sensitivity of the CCD imager, though this sacrifices color in well lit recording. Manual controls need space, either in menus or as buttons and make the use more complicated, which goes against the requirement of ease of use. Consumer units offer a plethora of I/O options (IEEE 1394/Firewire, USB 2.0, Composite and S-Video), but lack many manual settings, often excluding video exposure, gain control, or sound level management. For the beginner, entry-level camcorders offer basic recording and playback capability.
For the sophisticated hobbyist, high-end units offer improved optical and video performance through multi-CCD or multi-CMOS components and name-brand optics, manual control of camera exposure, removable optics, and more, but even consumer camcorders which are sold for $1000 such as the Panasonic GS250 are not well-suited for recording in dim light. When dimly-lit areas are brightened in-camera or in post-production, considerable noise distracts the viewer. Commercial special noise reduction algorithms are available to fix this as those available from Neat Image\Neat Video.

JVC GZ-MG555 hybrid camcorder (MPEG-2 SD-Video)
Before the 21st century, consumer video editing was a difficult task requiring a minimum of two recorders. Now, however, a contemporary Personal Computer of even modest power can perform digital video editing with editing software. Many consumer camcorders bundle a light (feature-limited) version of such software, as do some computers, and more advanced software is widely available at a variety of price points.
As of 2007, analog camcorders are still available but not widely marketed anymore; those that are still available are often less than US$250, but require special capture hardware for non-linear editing which may run into the thousands of dollars due to the plethora of sync and signal problems that may not be resolved with cheap capture equipement. In terms of sales, miniDV camcorders (and to a much lesser extent, Digital8) dominate most first world markets. Camcorders which record directly on DVD media are also on the rise, primarily among users with no plans to edit their footage. Nonetheless, software for editing video files created by DVD camcorders is available, including Womble DVD and VideoRedo. A user may also choose to recode the transport files of a dvd to that of an MPEG2 file which is supported by many other editing suites.
Hard disk based camcorders are appearing as well; JVC and Sony are the primary manufacturers of these units. Increased storage capacity over other types of media is the main advantage with these models; however, with this follows a slightly reduced image quality and loss of flexibility when compared to other formats such as MiniDV, making the ease of transferring the footage to a PC for quick editing the main attraction of Hard disk camcorders. Another downside Hard Drive based camcorders is the recording device itself which can be damaged irreparably by power failure or physical shock to the unit.

[edit] Other devices with video-capture capability
Video-capture capability is now available in selected models of cellphones, digicams, and other portable consumer electronic devices such as media players. Typically only digital cameras offer videos that are of useful quality for anything other than a novelty. The marketing approach is to claim 320 X 240 video is "VHS quality," and 640 X 480 video is "DVD quality." A few cameras can offer 800 X 600 resolution, and a recent development is High Definition (720p) in cameras such as the Sanyo Xacti HD1.
All are limited somewhat by having to serve as both cameras and camcorders. Compared to a dedicated camcorder they have poor low light performance, limited options, and many do not offer zoom during filming. (This is because the noise from the zooming motor is heard on the clip, only a few digicams have a manual zoom). Many either have fixed focus lenses, or autofocus lenses that are sluggish and noisy compared to a camcorder.
The quality varies widely depending on the compression format used and the type of device. Frame rates can range from 30 frame/s down to 10 frame/s, or can be variable, slowing down in dark settings. The length of clips can also vary from "unlimited" (up to the capacity of the storage media) down to as little as 30 seconds.
Low end MPEG-4 camcorders can often record unlimited length video clips at 320 X 240, but the quality is far below even a VHS-C camcorder. In addition, MPEG-4 is currently not widely supported in many video editing programs.
The use of digicams for recording video clips is limited mainly to circumstances where quality is not an issue. This is gradually being offset by the greater sophistication of the cameras, the increasing storage capacity of flash cards and microdrives, and the desire of consumers to carry only a single device.

[edit] Uses

[edit] Media

Operating a camcorder
Camcorders have found use in nearly all corners of electronic media, from electronic news organizations to TV/current-affairs productions. In locations away from a distribution infrastructure, camcorders are invaluable for initial video acquisition. Subsequently, the video is transmitted electronically to a studio/production center for broadcast. Scheduled events such as official press conferences, where a video infrastructure is readily available or can be feasibly deployed in advance, are still covered by studio-type video cameras (tethered to "production trucks.")

[edit] Home video
For casual use, camcorders often cover weddings, birthdays, graduation ceremonies, and other personal events. The rise of the consumer camcorder in the mid to late '80s led to the creation of shows such as the long-running America's Funniest Home Videos, where people could showcase homemade video footage.

[edit] Politics
Political protestors who have capitalized on the value of media coverage use camcorders to film things they believe to be unjust. Animal rights protesters who break into factory farms and animal testing labs use camcorders to film the conditions the animals are living in. Anti-hunting protesters film fox hunts. Tax protesters provide live coverage of anti-tax demonstrations and protests. Anti-globalization protesters film the police to deter police brutality. If the police do use violence there will be evidence on video. Activist videos often appear on Indymedia.
The police use camcorders to film riots, protests and the crowds at sporting events. The film can be used to spot and pick out troublemakers, who can then be prosecuted in court.

[edit] Entertainment and movies
Camcorders are often used in the production of low-budget TV shows where the production crew does not have access to more expensive equipment. There are even examples of movies shot entirely on consumer camcorder equipment (see Blair Witch Project and 28 Days Later). In addition, many academic filmmaking programs have switched from 16mm film to digital video, due to the vastly reduced expense and ease of editing of the digital medium as well as the increasing scarcity of film stock and equipment. Some camcorder manufacturers cater to this market, particularly Canon and Panasonic, who both support "24p" (24 frame/s, progressive scan; same frame rate as standard cinema film) video in some of their high-end models for easy film conversion.
Even high-budget cinema is done using camcorders in some cases; George Lucas used Sony CineAlta camcorders in two of his three Star Wars prequel movies. This process is referred to as digital cinematography.

[edit] Formats
The following list covers consumer equipment only. (For other formats see Videotape)

[edit] Analog

8 mm Camcorder
Lo-Band: Approximately 3 megahertz bandwidth (250 lines EIA resolution or ~333x480 edge-to-edge)
BCE (1954): First tape storage for video, manufactured by Bing Crosby Entertainment from Ampex equipment.
BCE Coloer (1955): First color tape storage for video, manufactured by Bing Crosby Entertainment from Ampex equipment.
Simplex (1955): Developed commercially by RCA and used to record several live broadcasts by NBC.
Quadruplex (1955): Developed formally by Ampex, and this became the recording standard for the next 20 years.
Vera (1955): An experimental recording standard developed by the BBC, but was never used or sold commerically.
Umatic (1971): The initial tape used by Sony to record video.
Umatics (1974): A small sized version of Umatic used for portable recorders.
Betamax (1975): Only used on very old Sony and Sanyo camcorders and portables; obsolete by the mid/late-80s in the consumer market.
Type B (1976): Co-developed by Sony and Ampex and this became the broadcast standard in europe for most of the 1980s.
Type C (1976): Co-developed by Sony and Ampex.
VHS (1976): Compatible with VHS standard VCRs, though VHS camcorders are no longer made. Obsolete.
VHS-C (1982): Originally designed for portable VCRs, this standard was later adapted for use in compact consumer camcorders; identical in quality to VHS; plays in standard home VCRs. Still available in the low-end consumer market (JVC model GR-AXM18 is VHS-C; see page 19 of the owner's manual}. Relatively short running time compared to other formats.
Betacam (1982): Introduced by Sony as a 1\2 inch tape for professional video recorders.
MUSE (1983): Commercial system for analogue 1080i broadcasts developed
Video8 (1985): Small-format tape developed by Sony to combat VHS-C's compact palm-sized design; equivalent to VHS or Betamax in picture quality, but not compatible. High quality audio as standard. Obsolete.
Hi-Vision (1985): MUSE renamed Hi-Vision and players started appearing on the market that could playback 1080i analogue video.
Hi-Band: Approximately 5 megahertz bandwidth (420 lines EIA resolution or ~550x480 edge-to-edge)
Laserdisk (1978): Marketed originally as LaserVision.
Umatic BVU (1982): Largely used in high-end consumer and professional equipment. The introduction of Umatic BVU spelled the end of 16mm film recordings.
Umatic BVU-SP (1985): Largely used in high-end consumer and professional equipment. The introduction of Umatic BVU spelled the end of 16mm film recordings.
Betacam-SP (1986): An minor upgrade to the Betacam format, but because of the upgrade, it became a broadcast standard.
MII (1986): Panasonic's answers to Betacam-SP
S-VHS (1987): Largely used in medium-end consumer and prosumer equipment; rare among mainstream consumer equipment, and rendered obsolete by digital gear like DigiBetacam and DV.
S-VHS-C (1987): An upgrade to provide near-laserdisc quality. Now limited to the low-end consumer market (example: JVC SXM38). As per VHS-C, relatively short running time compared to other formats.
Hi8 (1988): Enhanced-quality Video8; roughly equivalent to Super VHS in picture quality, but not compatible. High quality audio as standard. Now limited to low-end consumer market (example: Sony TRV138)
W-VHS (1994): Short lived 1080i tape format that had the ability to record.

[edit] Digital

MICROMV camcorder and tape (top) compared to miniDV and Hi8 tapes
Umatic (1982): An experiments overhaul was made to umatic to record digital video, but this was impractical and the tapes were used as a trasport for digital audio only. This led to the D series of tapes about 4 years later.
D1 (Sony) (1986): The first digital video recorder. It used digitized component video, encoded at Y'CbCr 4:2:2 using the CCIR 601 raster form and experimentally supported full HD broadcasts.
D2 (video format) (1988): This was a cheap alternative the D1 tape created by Ampex and this actually encoded video digitally instead of sampling composite video and experimentally supported full HD broadcasts.
D3 (1991): Created by panasonic to compete with the Ampex D2 and experimentally supported full HD broadcasts.
DCT (videocassette format) (1992): This was the first compressed video tape format created by Ampex based on the D1 format. It used discrete cosine transform as its codec of choice. DST was a data-only standard introduced to the rapidly growing IT industry.
D5 HD (1994): 1080i digital standard introduced by Sony based on the D1 tape.
Editcam (1995): First drive recording standard introduced by Ikegami. FieldPak used a IDE hard and RAMPak used a set of flash ram modules. It can record in DV25, Avid JFIF, DV, MPEG IMX, DVCPRO50, and Avid DNxHD format, depending on generation.
Digital-s (1995): JVC debuted a Digital Tape similar to VHS but had a differnt tape inside and supported digital HD broadcasts. Widely used by FOX broadcasting. Also called D-9.
MiniDV (1995) was a smaller version of the DV standard released by Sony.
DVD (1995): Uses either Mini DVD-R or DVD-RAM. This is a multi-manufacturer standard that uses 8 cm DVD discs for 30 minutes of video. DVD-R can be played on consumer DVD players but cannot be added to or recorded over once finalized for viewing. DVD-RAM can be added to and/or recorded over, but cannot be played on many consumer DVD players, and costs a lot more than other types of DVD recordable media. The DVD-RW is another option allowing the user to re-record, but only records sequentially and must be finalized for viewing. The discs do cost more than the DVD-R format, which only records once. DVD discs are also very vulnerable to scratches. DVD camcorders are generally not designed to connect to computers for editing purposes, though some high-end DVD units do record surround sound, a feature not standard with DV equipment.
DV (1996): Sony debuted the DV format tape with DVCAM being professional and DVCPRO being a panasonic variant.
D-VHS (1998): JVC debuted the digital standard of VHS tape and which supported 1080p HD. Many units also supported IEEE1394 recording.
Digital8 (1999), that uses Hi8 tapes (Sony is the only company currently producing D8 camcorders, though Hitachi used to). Most (but not quite all) models of Digital 8 cameras have the ability to read older Video8 and Hi8 analog format tapes. The format's technical specifications are of the same quality as MiniDV (both use the same DV codec), and although no professional-level Digital8 equipment exists, D8 has been used to make TV and movie productions (example: Hall of Mirrors).
MICROMV (2001): Uses a matchbox-sized cassette. Sony was the only electronics manufacturer for this format, and editing software was proprietary to Sony and only available on Microsoft Windows; however, open source programmers did manage to create capture software for Linux[2]. The hardware is no longer in production, though tapes are still available through Sony.
XDCAM (2003): A professional blu-ray standard introduced by Sony. This is similar to that of regular BRD but used different codecs, namely MPEG IMX, DV25 (DVCAM), MPEG-4, MPEG-2, and HD422.
Blu ray Disc (2003): Presently, Hitachi is the only manufacturer of Blu-ray Disc camcorders.
P2 (2004): First solid state recording medium of professional quality, introduced by Panasonic. Recorded DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO-HD, or AVC-Intra stream onto the card.
HDV (2004): Records up to an hour of HDTV MPEG-2 signal roughly equal to broadcast quality HD on a standard MiniDV cassette.
SxS (2007): Jointly developed by Sony and Sandisk. This is a solid state format of XDCAM and is known as XDCAM EX.
MPEG-2 codec based format, which records MPEG-2 program stream or MPEG-2 transport stream to various kinds of tapeless media (hard disks, solid-state memory, etc). Used both for standard definition (JVC, Panasonic) and high definition (JVC) recording.
H.264 codec based (and derivative AVCHD) format, which records MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) compressed video to various kinds of tapeless media (recordable optical discs, flash memory, hard disks, etc). Used mostly for high definition recording (Sony, Panasonic, Canon).

[edit] Digital camcorders and operating systems
Since most manufacturers focus their support on Windows and Mac users, users of other operating systems often are unable to receive support for these devices. However, open source products such as Cinelerra and Kino (written for the Linux operating system) do allow full editing of some digital formats on alternative operating systems, and software to edit DV streams in particular is available on most platforms.
Many low-end tapeless camcorders, however, do not support any operating system but Windows, requiring either third-party software or a switch to a more standardized format such as DV.