How do cameras work? I don't understand how a picture can be taken.
How do cameras work? I don't understand how a picture can be taken.
user
Oh, cameras. They’re really cool. They allow you to take pictures of the world and share those pictures with other people.  What’s the most famous photo in the world, do you know?  It’s a photo of Earth taken by the Apollo 8 mission. You can look it up online if you’re curious.
assistant
Yes, but how exactly do they work?
user
Alright, so here’s what happens. When you take a picture, the camera is collecting all the light from the subject and the lens, which is a part of the camera that helps focus the picture.  The light then passes through a grid of lines called an “array of diodes”.  So each of these diodes will send a different picture to the camera’s processor, and then they combine all these pictures in a way that makes it look like a photograph.  The process of taking the photo is called “making an exposure”.  For example, your camera phone is probably taking a “live stream” of images of the world that are being sent to the processor every few milliseconds.
assistant
I see. And is this the same process required to take a video? Or is that even more complicated?
user