Digital Camera

The concept of digitization of an image on a scanner and digitization of video signals brought the concept of snapping still pictures with the help of digital signals that are produced from an array of the discrete sensor elements. In late 1976, NRO launched the KH-11, the first electronic imaging satellite. KH-11 had a charge coupled device array that had a resolution capacity of 800*800 pixels or 0.64 megapixels. The first digital camera installed in microcomputer was Cromemco CYCLOPS, which was introduced as a Hobbyist Construction Project. In 19755, the first recorded attempt made on building a self contained digital camera by Steven Sasson who was an engineer at Kodak. It used a CCD image sensor chips, which was developed in 1973 by Fairchild Semiconductor. The camera had a weight of 3.6 Kg, a resolution of o.o1 megapixels, and used to record black and white images that were stored on a compact cassette tape.  This was just a prototype camera and was not intended for production.

In 1995, Minolta introduced the first digital SLR camera. It had small size and was highly portable. Fuji DS-1P of 1988 was the first portable digital camera that could record an image in computerized file. It had a 2 MB SRAM memory card in it, which used a battery to store the data in memory. However, this camera was not launched in a market for public. The Mega Vision Tessera launched in 1987 is said to be the first digital camera commercially launched in the market, though there is not any extensive documentation found that could address the sales in the market. The first portable digital camera actually sold commercially in the market was DS-X. Fuji of Japan launched this in Dec 1989. In Nov 1990, Dycam Model 1 became the first potable digital camera to be commercially available in the US market.  It got failure in the market as it used to produce black and white image, had a low resolution, and cost approximately $1000 during that time. In 1992, it got modest success when it was re-sold in the market Logitech Fotoman. It had a CCD image sensor in it. It was able to store image digitally and could be directly connected to a computer for image downloading.

In 1991, Kodak launched the Kodak DCS in the market. It used a 1.3 Megapixels camera sensor. It had a bulk external digital storage system. During that time it cost high price in the market i.e., $13000. Kodak also launched Kodak DCS-200 in the market and dubbed Kodak DCS as Kodak DCS-100.  In 1998, the formation of JPEG and MPEG standards took the digital photography arena one-step more ahead.  These digital formats allowed the image and video files to compress for storage. In 1995, Hiroyuki Suetaka with a team developed Casio QV-10 camera with liquid crystal display on its back for the first time as a consumer camera. The Kodak DC-25 launched in 1996 was the first digital camera to use Compact Flash. The Ricoh RDC-1 launched in 1995 was the first digital camera that had the ability to record a video clip. In 1999, Nikon D1 was introduced in the market. It was the first digital SLR camera with capacity of 2.74 megapixels. It cost $6000 in the introduction period, which was an affordable price for professional photographers and high-end consumers. It also used Nikon F-mount lenses, which allows film photographers to use many of the same lenses that they own. 

Digital camera continued to flourish with the flow of time due to technological advancement. The digital camera market segmented into several categories; Bridge Cameras, Compact Digital Still Cameras, Digital SLRs, and Mirror Less Compacts. One of the major advancement made in digital technology was the development of CMOS sensor. It helped to drive the cost of sensor to low enough and enable the adoption of camera phones. The high-resolution digital cameras are now routinely included in Smartphones Tablets and many other digital accessories.