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| Sunday, 4 September 2005 |
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Photo excellence -
Captivating by Rikaza Hassan In celebration of 25 years in operation, the National Association of Photographers Sri Lanka (NAPSL) organised a display of photographs at the National Art Gallery from the 26th to the 28th of August. Participants, both Sri Lankan and foreign, submitted over 800 photographs in the three open categories of Monochrome, Colour and Digital with nearly 300 being chosen to be exhibited. Local amateur photographers were not excluded from this competition; the Local Amateur Section was opened specially keeping them in mind. Winners are awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in each of the categories. The gold medal winner in the Digital Photography section was Sandun Madhuranga. In addition, the NAPSL also hosted information stalls on the art of photography as well as lectures by veterans of the art in an effort to give the lover of photography the ultimate photo experience in one go. The NAPSL organizes photographic exhibitions, workshops, field trips and courses on photography for both their members and those others with an interest in the subject. Its photography course conducted at the Colombo centre includes full practical lessons including film developing and printing and is very popular among photography enthusiasts. A short course on digital photography will be introduced from later this year. The NAPSL has been the birth place of hundreds of photo artistes in Sri Lanka and has been the driving factor behind uplifting the art of photograph taking. The shift in Camera
This fundamental shift in technology totally changed how we handle visual and audio information and completely redefined what is possible. The digital camera is one of the most remarkable instances of this shift because it is so truly different from its predecessor. Conventional cameras depend entirely on chemical and mechanical processes you don't even need electricity to operate one. All digital cameras have a built-in computer and all of them record images in an entirely electronic form. This new approach has proved monstrously successful. Essentially, a digital image is just a long string of 1s and 0s that represent all the tiny colored dots - or pixels - that collectively make up the image. If you want to get a picture into this form, you have two options:
* You can directly sample the original light that bounces off your subject, immediately breaking that light pattern down into a series of pixel values - in other words, you can use a digital camera. At its most basic level, this is all there is to a digital camera. Just like a conventional camera, it has a series of lenses that focus light to create an image of a scene. But instead of focusing this light onto a piece of film, it focuses it onto a semiconductor device that records light electronically. A computer then breaks this electronic information down into digital data. All the fun and interesting features of digital cameras come as a direct result of this process.
The CCD is a collection of tiny light-sensitive diodes, which accumulate electrons (electrical charge) when they are hit with light particles (photons). These diodes are called photosites. In a nutshell, each photosite is sensitive to light - the brighter the light that hits a single photosite, the greater the electrical charge that will accumulate at that site. |
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| Politics | Produced by Lake House |
In the past twenty years, most of the major technological breakthrough
in consumer electronics, have really been part of one larger breakthrough.
When you get down to it, CDs, DVDs, HDTV, MP3s and DVRs are all built
around the same basic process: converting conventional analog information
(represented by a gradually fluctuating wave) into digital information
(represented by 1s and 0s, or bits). 
* You can take a photograph using a conventional film camera, process
the film chemically, print it onto photographic paper and then use a
digital scanner to sample the print (record the pattern of light as a
series of pixel values). 
The key difference between a digital camera and a film-based camera is
that the digital camera has no film. Instead, it has a sensor that
converts light into electrical charges. The image sensor employed by most
digital cameras is a charge coupled device (CCD). Some low-end cameras use
complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. 
