Digital Imaging Fundamentals:

This is a presentation I created for the Grandfather Mountain Nature Photography Weekend in June 2002, covering the basics of digital imaging. It's intended to provide an understanding of the fundamental principles of digital imaging, providing you with a foundation from which you can move on to more detailed study. (It's difficult to evaluate cameras' pixel count it you don't have a good understanding of what a pixel is, so that's where it begins.)

I made the unusual decision to create my presentation in HTML and JavaScript in order to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities and interactivity unavailable with presentation software like Powerpoint. Although I frown on the use of JavaScript on the web, for security and compatibility reasons, I find it very useful on a computer running a presentation so I'm requesting the indulgence of web purists here and ask that you have JavaScript turned on in your web browser (it's generally on by default).

Unlike most web pages, this presentation is written to be browsed sequentially, starting from page 1 and proceeding in a specific order, using the red arrow in the lower right of each screen to move to the next page, but you can jump to any page you like from the navigation bar on the left. On the left side of this page, there links to the rest of my web site, and at the bottom is a mail link in case you would like to ask me any questions or perhaps purchase lots of large, expensive prints of my photographs ;-)

You'll find that you can get demonstrations of the topics being discussed by putting your mouse pointer over various images or words throughout the presentation. If you saw my talk at Grandfather Mountain, you may remember most of them. If not, just hunt around a bit and see what's hidden. You'll also find that, for most of the photographs, placing your mouse pointer over a photo will show you the camera, lens and film used to take that picture. With that said, there's nothing left but to start you off.

Click here to begin.