Studio Digital Cameras

Professional quality in digital cameras is not defined only in terms of very high image resolutions. Part of the definition also has to do with equipment reliability - the general build quality that is required to ensure that the highest levels of operation under the most testing conditions are maintained. This explains why although some professional digital cameras may be as much as ten times the price of amateur models, they offer lower image resolution. However, these cameras widely used by news and picture agencies all around the world - are sturdy enough to be taken into war zones, use military-grade components to survive punishing conditions, and produce colour consistency that can be relied on.

In the studio environment, professional cameras do not have to be easily portable, as many subjects are either stationary or can be confined within a small area. Here a different type of digital camera can be employed. These dedicated studio models not only give very high resolution, they are also tethered to a computer - the camera sends image data directly to the computer as it is captured, rather than storing it internally, as a portable camera does. This makes the camera simpler to make: indeed, most devices are simply built into a box that fits into a standard film back of any conventional studio camera, such as Sinar, Linhof, Area, or Cambo, or onto conventional medium-format camera bodies, such as those made by Hasselblad, Rolleiflex, Mamiya, or Bronica.

Being studio-based, these cameras employ a type of image capture different to that of a portable model - the scanning back. This is essentially the same mechanism as that used in a flat-bed scanner: a row of CCDs is run along the length of the film format to capture the image. A variant of this is the triple-shot camera. In this, three exposures are made through separate red, green, and blue filters.

The result of these arrangements is not only far higher resolutions (some cameras can churn out massive 244MB files or larger), but scanning backs easily exceed film in terms of the dynamic range - the range between the brightest and dark subject areas - that can be recorded.

Steve J. Wilson is living in the United States and is a freelance writer since 2006, in digital photography related topics. If you are interested in some useful Digital Photography Class, than you are in the right place.

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