by Demetrew Wilfredo Flores

Created on: July 11, 2009   Last Updated: July 21, 2009

If you are a photography buff and had been enjoying photography along with its rudimentary ways, you will readily admit the sheer joy of waking up one day, realizing that time has come for you to end up your endless journey to the store in buying endless loads of film to suit your needs. The shift from the old ways to the new may feel a bit sentimental at first but you have to admit it, no technology is built to remain as it is.

So you wake up one day holding the latest digital camera in your hands, it has a rechargeable battery, a memory stick instead of film and an LCD. The good thing is you could preview the shots you have taken and decide on it if it's worth a space on the memory card. You can delete any unwanted shot and gain the space on the memory unlike a used film which you cannot alter if it was already exposed and which you couldn't view the shots taken until it is processed.

The course of events that led to the development of digital photography was started back in 1967. Frank Wanlass patented the first CMOS, an acronym for Complimentary Symmetry Metal Oxide Semiconductor. CMOS is a technology for making Integrated Circuits and is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM and other digital logic sensors. In wider use, it is also used on analog circuits such as image sensors, data converters, and highly integrated transceivers for many types of communication.

In 1969, two men from Bell Labs were brainstorming on new types of memory for computers and came up with the idea of the first Charge Coupled Device (CCD). What George Smith and Willard Boyle had thought out was to be the commonly used photosensor for capturing images in digital cameras today.

All through memory lane let's cut the long story and pick up the traces after Sony came up with the first digital camera prototype in 1981. The Mavica (which stands for Magnetic Video Camera) used CCD technology which allows for saving low resolution pictures to two inch floppy disks. While this camera was not available for consumers, and its images were best seen through TV monitors before being printed, it started a revolution in image processing technology. Actually it was just awaiting the conception of another component that will make it more complete, the memory chip.

The compatibility of the technology that will make digital camera complete for consumer market lies in the discovery of the flash memory. Flash memory is a technology that is primarily used in memory cards and USB flash drives. Flash memory was invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba (Tokyo Shibaura Corporation) in 1980. "According to Toshiba, the name "flash" was suggested by Dr. Masuoka's colleague, Mr. Shoji Ariizumi, because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him of a flash of a camera" (Flash memory history, wikipedia). The invention was presented in the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in 1984 in California.

It's just a matter of time until everything ended up in the proper place, by 1986, Kodak and Nikon teamed up and the megapixel camera appeared as we knew it today. The first digital camera to be placed on the market in the U.S. was actually a Kodak DCS-100 with 1.3 effective megapixels which retailed for over $13,000 aimed to win the preference of photojournalists.

Today, you hold that digital camera in your hand and despite it could be available as low as $20, you may prefer for something more expensive. Just don't regret though, if you got the full packed latest 15.2 effective megapixel model, it would take years before you'll feel insecure about an outdated model. Fortunately there will be no films ever, just be sure to pack up plenty of rechargeable batteries.

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