It is True; indeed that being able to capture and preserve moments in time and presenting these in the future had greatly changed how people conceive the world, today.

Photography is undoubtedly one of the most important inventions in history. The basic technology that makes all of this possible is fairly simple. A still film camera is made of three basic elements: an optical element (the lens), a chemical element (the film) and a mechanical element (the camera body itself). As we'll see, the only trick to photography is calibrating and combining these elements in such a way that they record a crisp, recognizable image.

The most common early cameras(just before the digital age) would be the manual single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera types. Which provides an excellent illustration of the fundamental processes of photography where the optical component of the camera is the lens.

A lens is just a curved piece of glass or plastic. It's main purpose is to collect light that bounced off a subject and redirect them together to form a real image.

There are three(3) types of consumer cameras on the market these days – DSLR, Power Zoom and point-and-shoot cameras.

All three(3) types of cameras are operated mostly by the digital circuit built-in to it and this controls more than 80% of the camera's operations. Storage capacity have increase more than 100 times, compared before (using film type).

The most obvious difference between today's DSLR, point-and-shoot and Power Zoom types are the following;

DSLR cameras:

Point-and-Shoot:

Power Zoom: 

The Power Zoom cameras are actually by product of DSLR and Point-and-Shoot type. These are excellent cameras for those who need the option(s) to control how images are captured. These are for those who needed the extra zooming power not more than 20 times(optical), closer to the focused subject at hand.

Power Zoom camera types are great learning tools for photography that won't cost a fortune (compared to a good DSLR cameras). These camera are also called semi-pro cameras due to the feature to overwrite the camera default programmed shooting mode.

Todays camera still rely on lenses to deliver clearer images but it's the advanced electronic circuit built-in to each and every digital camera that gives life to the overall camera. This holds true to all three(3) camera types, from the tiny Hi-resolution image sensor to the fast Secured-Disk (SD) storage (where the images are stored).

It is always a good idea to plan, get more information before you head out to buy your camera... Today.