1. The Basics:

The basics of digital photography reduced to 3 simple sentences...

▪ Digital cameras store images as binary data on a memory card.

▪ A light-sensitive sensor in the camera records the image coming in from the lens, and then converts the data into a format that computers can process.

▪ This information is translated into pixels (short for picture element.)

The pixel is the basic component of a digital image. A pixel is merely a colored dot value. When these colored dots are placed in a specific order, they create an image. The process is essentially "paint by numbers" on a very tiny scale.

Zooming into the selected area reveals that the entire image is really the product of colored dots, called pixels, grouped in a specific order.
 

2. Image Capture:

Once the image is captured as pixels (binary information) the data can be manipulated by algorithms (a set of mathematical instructions that perform a task).  Don't worry: As boring as this sounds, the camera does it automatically so you don't have to do the math.

Much of the information stored in digital cameras is interpretive. This is actually both the great strength and weakness of all digital photography --sometimes the interpretation is perfect, and sometimes something is lost in the translation.