How do digital cameras work? | James May Q&A | Head Squeeze
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- You're at the best concert ever and all you can think of is taking as many pics of your favourite super star on your trusty smart phone. You've spent more time taking photos than actually enjoying the concert, but who cares? You've got the proof to show all your workmates you were there!
But how exactly does a digital camera work?
It's all very simple really. The camera's sensor is covered with tiny light sensitive cells, each of which can measure the amount of light that falls on it. The cells act like the old photosensitive film, reacting to the light which falls on them and then reporting to the camera's microprocessor brain. The camera doesn't just look at an individual pixel on the sensor; it also looks at the pixels around it to come up with an informed guess of what the true colour of that pixel is.
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Pros to his editors who made that progress bar and battery meter actually work in sync with the video 👏👏
I like how the graphic for the battery life changed over time on this video. Nice touch!
It's amazing what you can do these days. Jesus.
Its not a great battery if it went down that much in 4 mins 😂😂
Wolf2169 lol 🤣
I like James May, he seems like a really good guy.
Prence i
Thanks for that
Trolling Hammond in ever so subtle ways.
God I love James May.
.wears shirt.
Finally a video with James May again! I signed up for James May, you know? And I will not watch any videos without James May! Exclamation Mark!
I love how he mocks his fellow Top Gear "mates." :)
Wait i thought this was top gear¿
I couldn't wait to have my head squozen again!
You're very welcome!
It's pronounced "squazzed".
Messer Catapecchi, its 'squeezed'
Messer Catapecchi yuh
it felt like I was watching some alien transcript about some super super advanced technology beyond human comprehension
YaY! Top gear jokes :)
Nice video art!! I loved the fact that the timer in the camera is in perfect sync with the actual video length :D
Who wants to see James May on camera?
Driving a Koenigsegg Agera R.
At 270+ MPH.
While Clarkson and Hammond shit themselves silly.
And The Stig, just stands there in the background. Being "The Stig". And nothing else...
Koegnisegg and 270+ MPH on the same sentence xD
Glad to see James May Q&A again !
I love James May's Q&A, can't wait to see more!
Brilliantly explained James, fantastic.
Most CCDs in consumer technologies also work how James described the CMOS, using the Bayer pattern to record color information. The real differences between the two come at the fundamental electronics levels and the mechanic of how they actually handle the light to charge to voltage to digital value conversions on the sensor itself, or within a second complementary circuit.
That battery meter goes as quick as in my camera :/
Even with new battery
well, i was going to say the same. i think they need to replace the battery :/
It's been far too long since your last one of these ***** Glad to see the channel still alive and well.
It is quite sad that for the amount of pictures taken by humans, only a microfraction of them appreciate and understand this fascinating process.
I've been watching Top Gear for years and it is only now that I discover that May had a show on UA-cam this whole time? What sorcery is this?!?!?
May is back!!! does this mean that the new Top Gear is on shoot?
According to finalgear, it will be back on the second of February
Imagine Clarkson and Hammond watching this.
Jack Holmes they'd fall asleep by the second minute
Jack Holmes lol..
Finally, James is back! :D
I love the constant jabs at your colleagues from Top Gear. Do you think ether of them even watch this?
Daily reminder that I fancy myself smart but am in fact not even half as well educated as people in STEM today. No worries, I'm content staring blankly in awe at the achievement of others.
I like James May head squeeze. :) Lots of interesting stuff. Here is to more head squeezing with James May in the future!
Oh yeah, very good episode and like others have said, that meter was a nice touch. :)
More of these please, James :0
Bring back head squeeze!
Bring him back!
Did anyone noticed that batery level is lowering trough video
Nemanja Milosevic I thought it was gonna cut him off before he finished like in grand tour and top gear. Sorry for late reply only just discovered this series
Did you notice how shite you are at spelling?
@@drubber007 Well you've just mispelled shit
I was just wondering if James May was going to do more Head Squeeze. Now I know!
Clever using the battery indicator ;)
Nice touch by the animator no? We liked it too : )
***** Indeed :D
+Faiz Shaikh Slow down the camera view shots and look at the recording time. What do you notice?
Reply
That's so cool how they used the "cameras" battery life to show the end of the video. 😃
James just SQUEEZE my head!!!!
I am pleasantly surprised they did a video about this
Thanks for a great video! Well explained and entertaining :) Showing this to my photography students.
Wish my teachers showed us UA-cam videos
Sorry James (or, more properly, Head Squeeze researchers), Big Mouth Billy Bass came out in 1998 while I definitely had a digital camera in 1996 (the Kodak DC25, I've still got it packed away somewhere) while my middle-school buddy had the Apple Quicktake 100 at least a year earlier (it was released in 1994). And these were just the early COMMERCIALLY available digital cameras, extremely expensive professional digital cameras existed before that.
Also worth noting that the primary reason CMOS (pronounced SEE-moss) sensors are so ubiquitous is that it's far less expensive and less power-hungry than the CCD varieties. The downside being that it actually has to observe the image one line at a time (kinda like a scanner) which, on particularly cheap cameras like those found on phones, can result in distortion effects when the camera and subject are moving in relation to each other (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter ). CCD, on the other hand, takes a snapshot of the scene so you don't get this effect (though you do get other effects such as when a point light source is bright enough you can get a vertical smear as the electrons spill over into neighbouring cells).
Of course the ubiquity, low cost, and low power use of CMOS means that there has been far more R&D on it than CCD which has resulted in some very high quality CMOS sensors that don't have nearly as much distortion as their cheaper siblings which is why you can even find them in high-end professional DSLRs.
Pro-tip: Use a fixed-width font for timers.
Very good explanation but I would personally like more details about specifics, like how is the film made, why can it capture the light? How exactly does the sensor chip work? How exactly does the lens focus the light?
I love love love love you so much james :(
I actually learned something. Thanks
Well done, clearly not your first video. Thank you.
Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 41 Megapixel camera. On a phone! A windows phone of all things!!
Many people think that more MP = better quality, and they are half right. But what really gives you the detail are not the MP but the size of the sensor. The difference in size from a phone sensor to a DSLR sensor is tremendous.
Yeah that is true. Although you have to admit, the 1020's camera looks damn fine.
It is damn impressive, but I saw a review and even though it has an amazing picture quality, it seemed to alter some colours quite a bit, which is a shame.
Yeah there is a lot of Saturation that is really not needed with such a big sensor ect.
i read that is was actually only 5 megapixels. i dont know how they do that. anyone care to explayn :) ?
How long till we get a gigapix unit? ... Mr May is back too play ! Finally ...
**right after the video cuts off** JAMES! IS THAT MY CAMERA YOU'RE FILMING YOU LECTURE WITH!?
i like how the battery ran out as the vid went on :P
Hammonds hair and Clarksons tooth!
May change the battery! :)
Ii like what you did with the camera timeline thing
Thanks everyone who replied with useful info on this tech, yes I know that it does 38mp + 5mp or 34mp + 5mp depending on aspect ratio, I was amazed with the low light performance on my lumia 920 & 1020. I was genuinely asking why top end point and shoot and dslr 's don't have the high pixel count like the 1020 and Iam aware mp is not the main factor of picture quality. Once again thank you all who replied with useful info.
The only pro DSLR body to have a high MP count is the Nikon D800, which has 36 megapixels. The Flagship DSLR's do not, mainly because of how pixel density affects low light/High ISO performance. When this isn't a factor, such as for medium format cameras that are used only in a studio with controlled lighting, the megapixel count is increased. Check out the Hasselblad H4x. It's an 80 megapixel camera.
Are we going to ignore that the time counter on the camera is perfectly in sync?
Woah Jamess May sir 😊 good class..
The one video were the UA-cam subtitles option actually works.
Was the chip first pioneered for space exploration? All those old images from the ships sent to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn etc... it facilitated sending them back digitally. And the first ones would definitely be low res and clunky. And they were.
Haha amazing edit on the screen
James, we can see your eyes moving to read the teleprompter :P
Sorry, I can't watch this video without getting furious about that they didn't use a monospaced font for the time shown on the camera!! :S
I was annoyed because the white slider bar for the time was above the stencil not under it giving it a really annoying effect
It was hunny look at james's moving eyeballs and then realizing how much he has to read
12 or 16? Nikons entry level DSLR's now are 24mp =P
They do but it's thats not really that important, it's the person behind the camera that matters.
Luke Clark Did I say anything about 24 making people better photographers? I was referring to what he was saying about 12 to 16 megapixels being common place with high end cameras, when most professional cameras and even cheaper ones are using 2x and sometimes 3x more pixels than that. Not including the Hasselblad or other medium format.
Although, top range pro bodies, namely Canon 1Dx and Nikon D4, still rock "only" 18 and 16 MP, respectively. But that's because of better low-light performance and incredible burst rate they can achieve.
TheDoubleBee Less data for the processor to deal with. I would hate to see how big the heat sink and battery would have to be to manage 36mp raw files at 10fps.
How come James May doesn't make these videos anymore?
Hi @Brit Lab I have one. Why and how lips are as they are. Like why does is separate half inside the mouth and the other outside? How does the skin drying out works? - and why it happens, doesn't they lubricate themselves like the rest of the body? Why are some bigger than another persons? - and why is the lower lip always bigger?
i have a nikon D800 and that has a massive 36.3 megapixels :P
A 16mp camera will not allow you to produce large images with no loss of perceived quality unless it comes from a large enough sensor, the same way you could not do the same with 110 film no matter how fine a grained film you used, you can't cheat the system.
yeah, megapixel is a little too much spoken word.
yu8mjjxdrjhlgb yh vv
Can you explain how wind works Mr.May?
ya
when are you back on Top Gear?!
next episode is 26th jan. not long now
Haha that richard hammond pun over there
Who cut the cheese? *snap* Oh goddammit!
The digital camera came after Billy the Bass singing fish???
That was released in 1998. So that clears that up then.
Megapixels are great. But they're also misleading. Did you know 35 mm film has detail equivalent to about 35 megapixels? For that matter, 'full frame' film cameras produce images exceeding an effective resolution of 100 megapixels. But... This doesn't take into account yet that the 'megapixels' of a digital camera aren't proper pixels... a colour pixel needs to have an RGB value. And the 'megapixel' rating counts each red, green & blue pixel element as individual things. (Which would be correct in a black & white sensor, but is wrong in a colour one).
This means the actual 'resolution' of a digital camera, when compared to say a computer screen, is only 1/3 of it's 'megapixel' rating. (or 1/2 at most if you consider the image processing.) - I'm staring at a computer screen with the (for current computers) rather low resolution of about 1 million pixels. But, to get a good quality picture that takes up the whole screen without any missing detail, it would require a 3 megapixel camera...
A standard HD screen of 1920×1080 is 3.456.000 pixels, which is equal to 3,456 megapixels. Not 1 MP. So this is only logical.
I have a 12,2 MP DSLR which (not surprisingly) shoots at 4272×2848 pixels (12.166.656 pixels).
No, you're making an incorrect assumption there. A standard HD screen is not what I mentioned in the slightest. I was referring to the display on the laptop I typed it with, - Which is 1280 by 800. or pretty much EXACTLY 1 million pixels.
Your comment seems to have missed the point though.
While your DSLR may well output at 4272x2848, this is an interpolated resolution.
The 12 megapixels of your camera consist of just 4 million 'real' pixels. Any additional resolution is entirely down to interpolation.
The 1280x800 display on my laptop contains 1 million RGB pixels. Which, in fact each contain 3 sub-pixels.
By comparison, your '12' megapixel DSLR DOES not contain 12x3 million sub-pixels. It has 12 million sub-pixels TOTAL.
To create a single colour pixel value thus requires combining 3 sub-pixels.
Thus the actual resolution (as in the definition of 'resolution' used in telescopes and the like, as the minimum size at which two points can be seen as seperate from one another )of a 12 megapixel camera is only sufficient for a display with 4 million pixels.
Unfortunately, this means if your camera is outputting files with 12 megapixels, it is 'making up' the content of at least half of them.
KuraIthys Also, a 12.2 MP DSLR actually outputs 12 million pixels. A bayer array (or bayer filter) doesnt use every four "pixels" (photosites) once, it generates an RGB value from every point between the photosites. So every photosite contributes to four adjecent pixels. Source: www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-sensors.htm
malvinmalvin You can't just reuse a photosite without consequence though; Because photosites generally do not overlap, if there is a green photosite the red & blue information is missing for that location. Therefore, it is interpolated.
- Interpolated data is NOT the same as having a proper RGB pixel data. You're generating 12 million pixels from 12 million photosites, where you should be generating it from 36 million. Thus 2/3 of all your image information is made up, and is not actually something the camera ever captured...
KuraIthys Indeed there are some drawbacks, and using a bayer array the way you described might yield better results, but with much fewer pixels. I only meant to point out that a 3MP camera actually outputs 3MP, not 1 MP.
i dint know that james may does other movies/episodes.i thoght he just makes awesome top gear!!??
There's a whole playlist of videos on here with James! ua-cam.com/play/PLMrtJn-MOYmfqNgyPxx6NYMZnd25y4shc.html
thanks!!i whatched a lot of he's videos and i really liked them all!!i thought he just makes TOP GEAR.thanks again!!
Richard Hammond's hair lol
Isn't it manly? :)
james may!!!!!! i like u sooooo much
IMO the problem with Hammond's hair is caused by the AntiAliasing (AA) filter which is nothing but slightly matted piece of glass in front of the sensor which makes everything a tad blurried. Combine it with the mess on the Hammond's head and you'll get a visual disaster. Try to remove this filter - you will have a nasty moire on the regular objects but Hammond's head (and may be even his jokes) will be rendered a little bit sharper. Sorry for my poor english.
I think the trend that manufacturers do these days is removing the AA filter to give more detail to the image, and even though it doesn't have the filter, the results for moire is almost to none *at least to me*
The technology is improving a lot compared to the early digital cameras
Why did he stop
that's why now more often people use green box instead blue box.
Dat Editing.
Slow down the camera view shots and look at the recording time. What do you notice?
hydrogen or hybrid? which is a better fuel for cars?
Oh Cock! He was reading the explanation for the Megapixel from the Wikipedia article on Pixels :P
Here you go,
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel
And no, I'm not fun at parties.
Hi james, i have a question how does wireless work?
So in other words at the end, Hammond does dye his hair?
Can you explain colourblindness?
is this the last head squeeze?
Hey mr. May, when is TopGear back??! Plz answer
the constant flickering of position by the time elapsed was a bit distracting, the text probably shouldn't have been auto aligned in every frame
It's not true that ten years ago you'd struggle to get a digital camera with more than 1 megapixel. I bought my first digital camera in 2004, an HP Photo Smart R707, which I still have, and it had 5.1 megapixels.
Richard hammonds hair.
I've got a question for you James... Can you actually swim in space to move towards a desired location??
Well, I'm not James, but the answer is no. To 'swim' in space, you'd need some form of gas or similar, to create resistance to your motions, thus allowing you to exploit Newtons third law of motion. With nothing to push against, you'll just flail around.
***** I thought so!! thus, the typical stereotype thinking of people moving into space by swimming like in cartoon is not real at all!! but then, how does astronaut move about in space??
So a digital camera does make pictures it saved light.
what about Hammond's teeth whitening balance?
Why do we have an appendix
Did anyone notice that the record timer on the screen matches with youtube timer lol xD
I would like to ask James May,"What is earthing?"
James May can you please explain to us why many people take very annoying vertical video instead nice horizontal video?
esisolina1 bit late mate
😂 still just magic to me
So why do we call the camera "digital"? It uses digits, but how? What's behind a pixel? It works through the binary system? Thanks a lot.
Sevak Kirakosyan Digital is a polysemantic world. You call it digital camera becouse digital electronics are "electronic circuits representing signals by discrete bands of analog levels, rather than by a continuous range". You can think about a digital camera or clock or whatever digital electronic device as a device that contains a microchip.
+Sevak Kirakosyan Because the processed electric signal is in 0's and 1's - digits. Also known as binary code.
my question is: are aliens real?
The battery was running out.... cool. :)
What color is a mirror?