How does a digital camera turn light from a lens into a series of 0s and 1s?

Question

How does a digital camera turn light from a lens into a series of 0s and 1s?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Essentially, using some variant of the [photoelectric effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect). The incoming light hits specially designed materials, essentially ‘knocking’ electrons out of the atoms and causing them to be able to move freely. Because of the way the circuit is designed, those freed electrons prefer moving in one direction rather than another, so the light hitting the sensors directly translates to a difference in charge between one end of the sensor and the other.

This difference in charge can be detected and amplified into a voltage, which can then be chopped up into a series of fixed levels by comparing it against reference voltages. Those fixed levels can then be expressed mathematically as a series of 1s and 0s and saved/transmitted digitally.