Why You Should Care About Your Camera's ADC

All digital cameras are assigned an ADC number and it is given in the manufacturer's technical specifications for each model.

All DSLR and point-and-shoot cameras employ sensors that consist of pixels with photodiodes. These components convert the energy of photons into an electrical charge. That charge is converted to a voltage, which is then amplified to a level at which it can be processed further by the digital camera’s Analog to Digital Converter (variously called the ADC, AD Converter, and the A/D Converter).

The ADC is a chip inside your digital camera and its job is to classify the voltages of the pixels into levels of brightness and to assign each level to a binary number, consisting of zeros and ones. Most consumer digital cameras use at least an 8-bit ADC, which allows for up to 256 values for the brightness of a single pixel.

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