I kind of have an understanding about film camera, but for some reason I cannot wrap my head around how digital cameras work. From a mechanical and engineering standpoint, what is the actual difference between how the two operate?
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Photographic film uses an array of tiny light-sensitive crystals (each sensitive to a different color of light in the case of color film). More light makes the resulting image get brighter by activating the crystal more.
Digital cameras replace the crystals with an array of light-sensitive electronic elements. To record color, these elements are below a grid of colored lenses that impact the relative amount of light each element receives. Computers (either in the camera or an external computer) put the picture together based on the recorded amount of light each element received and make a best-guess at the color (called demosaicing and interpolation) based on each element’s position in the color grid. Most cameras use what is called a Bayer filter (but there are other configurations as well) so the process is also sometimes called De-Bayering.
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