The Digital Camera Is an Eye, a Brain, a Hand, Paint, and Canvas

Note: The following might be too technical to some, so if you don't understand it, that's okay, you don't have to.

It's a way of making people realize how technology is just an advanced method of accomplishing the same tasks we've always known.

The Digital Camera Is an Eye, a Brain, a Hand, Paint, and Canvas

How so?

• The eye:
The camera lens is designed similar to the lens of the human eye, which regulates the amount and angle of incoming light. Just as a painter using a brush must open his eyes, a camera must as well allow light to enter through its lens.

Then:

The retina of the eye converts light into electrical neural signals, which are then transmitted to the brain. Likewise, the light sensors in a camera convert light into electrical signals that are transmitted to its internal computer—its “brain”.

• The brain:
The brain processes these data and enables us to perceive and comprehend what the eye has captured. There is no copied image; rather, we merely apprehend what is around us—and this is a significant distinction. In addition, our brains may store this information, or they may not.

The camera likewise processes these data, but it stores them simply as digital data in memory, so that it may produce images based on them, as follows:

• The hand:
When the photographer wishes to display the captured image on the screen (in devices that do not display the captured image automatically), the computer generates a copy of the digital data from memory and processes it again—but this time in reverse. It produces electrical signals using the device’s battery, at levels determined by the digital data.

These electrical signals are transmitted to the screen, which consists of an enormous number of tiny lamps. Each tiny lamp illuminates according to the electrical signal it receives, adopting the color and brightness level it is commanded to display.

After that, all of this complexity is essentially what the brush-using painter does as well: his brain moves his hand—
to dip the brush into paint of the appropriate color, then to place the colored brush in its proper locations on the canvas.

The difference lies in precision and speed: neither the brush nor the hand can achieve the precision and speed of a camera.

• The paint:
Both the brush-using painter and the camera use light; however, the painter uses paint to recreate the scene, whereas the camera uses the light of the screen’s lamps—which were previously electricity, and before that, stored digital data.

• The canvas:
The painter coats the canvas with paint, while the camera “coats” the screen with tiny lights.
The canvas cannot be reused unless it is washable, whereas the screen is used repeatedly until it breaks or becomes defective.
Their goal is one: to display the details of the reproduced image.

Therefore, the camera resembles a tool that combines the functions of the eye, the brain, the hand, the paint, and the canvas within a small, closed system—whose purpose is… image-making.

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