Image sensors for digital photography: a short course for undergraduates.
I: Optics

Abstract

Over the last half century, photography has evolved from photochemical reactions induced on a photosensitive film to optoelectronic devices employed in digital image. Video has done the same migration from classical film movies to optoelectronic acquisition and storage. Digital and video cameras share optics with traditional film cameras, but the image recording is realized by an optoelectronic device -a CCD or CMOS sensor- rather than a film. The quantity of digital photo and video images has dramatically increased in the last decade, arising from the ubiquitous cameras of mobile phones. Despite their popularity, condensed tutorial articles on the subject are still scarce. This work intends to contribute to the knowledge of this field with a medium-level short course that is currently being taught in a broader subject (Consumer Photonics) to undergraduate students of Telecommunication Engineers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The course can be followed by students having a basic background on Physics and specifically on Optics and Semiconductors. The course is divided into two chapters. An introduction to optics of cameras and basic concepts of photography has been considered necessary to follow the second part, which is entirely devoted to optoelectronic sensors.

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