Sure, we've explained to you why sensor size matters in a digital camera, but maybe you need to take it back a bit. Maybe, you're not entirely sure how those sensors work in the first place. Well, Bill Hammack, better known as The Engineer Guy, is here to help. After breaking down LCDs and hard drives for your amusement and education, Bill has turned his attention to the CCD. The charge-coupled device is the heart and soul of many a digital camera, turning incoming photons into a charge that the impressively complex processor inside can convert into an image. What makes the CCD so impressive is it's rather ingenious solutions to problems such as interference (no wires, just a shift register) and color reproduction (pixel-sized filters and a hue-flattening algorithm). For more, check out the video after the break.

Continue reading The mysteries of the CCD revealed (video)

The mysteries of the CCD revealed (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 19:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.