All cameras take pictures by catching light and dark. Unlike film cameras, which stamp light differences on a piece of film, digital cameras turn light changes into electrical impulses. These signals divide the scene into millions of discrete pixels, each with its own string of integers indicating the hue and brightness. The final result is a set of digital "directions" that may be read back to recreate the image on a screen. It also allows the generated image to be edited with editing tools.
A light sensor is the essential piece of equipment in a digital camera, and it is responsible for producing the aforementioned electrical impulses. A digital camera may have one of two types of light sensors: the CCD chips used by Sasson in the first digital camera, or a CMOS image sensor, which was developed in the 1960s but did not become generally available until the 1990s.
Modern digital photography can be divided into two categories, at least when it comes to consumer-level digital cameras: photography with small digital cameras and photography with high-end digital cameras.
If you're reading this on your phone, you're presumably holding a little digital camera right now. This sort of digital photography is extremely easy to use and convenient, placing the power of digital imaging in everyone's pocket.
Professionals, for the most part, use high-end digital cameras (more on that below). These are stand-alone cameras with a plethora of technical features and settings that result in high-quality digital photography. Compact digital cameras have steadily improved over the years; however, they are rarely comparable in terms of overall performance.