section_path: Primary types/Digital camera
section_name: Digital camera
paragraph_text: Digital camera
  
  A digital camera (or digicam) is a camera that encodes digital images and videos and stores them for later reproduction. They typically use semiconductor image sensors. Most cameras sold today are digital, and they are incorporated into many devices ranging from mobile phones (called camera phones) to vehicles.
  
  Digital and film cameras share an optical system, typically using a lens of variable aperture to focus light onto an image pickup device. The aperture and shutter admit the correct amount of light to the imager, just as with film but the image pickup device is electronic rather than chemical. However, unlike film cameras, digital cameras can display images on a screen immediately after being captured or recorded, and store and delete images from memory. Most digital cameras can also record moving videos with sound. Some digital cameras can crop and stitch pictures & perform other elementary image editing.
  
  Consumers adopted digital cameras in the 1990s. Professional video cameras transitioned to digital around the 2000s–2010s. Finally, movie cameras transitioned to digital in the 2010s.
  
  The first camera using digital electronics to capture and store images was developed by Kodak engineer Steven Sasson in 1975. He used a charge-coupled device (CCD) provided by Fairchild Semiconductor, which provided only 0.01 megapixels to capture images. Sasson combined the CCD device with movie camera parts to create a digital camera that saved black and white images onto a cassette tape. The images were then read from the cassette and viewed on a TV monitor. Later, cassette tapes were replaced by flash memory.
  
  In 1986, Japanese company Nikon introduced an analog-recording electronic single-lens reflex camera, the Nikon SVC.
  
  The first full-frame digital SLR cameras were developed in Japan from around 2000 to 2002: the MZ-D by Pentax, the N Digital by Contax 's Japanese R6D team, and the EOS-1Ds by Canon. Gradually in the 2000s, the full-frame DSLR became the dominant camera type for professional photography.
  
  On most digital cameras a display, often a liquid crystal display (LCD), permits the user to view the scene to be recorded and settings such as ISO speed, exposure, and shutter speed.