Charge Coupled Device. An integrated circuit (micro-chip) consisting of a group of charge storage cells (tiny capacitors) with the ability to pass charge from one to the next, in a line, like a bucket-brigade (i.e. like a group of fire-fighters passing buckets from one to the next). Originally conceived in the mid 1960s as an analogue delay line for processing RADAR images, someone came up with the idea of making each of the individual cells sensitive to light, and setting them out in an array, like the lines of a TV picture. Thus was born the replacement for the fussy and troublesome TV camera tube. Cheaper video cameras use a single CCD array with a color stripe filter to separate red, green and blue. Expensive cameras split the light into red, green, and blue optically, and use 3 CCD arrays.
Related Terms...
- HAD CCD - Sony's CCD imager, HAD = Hole Accumulation Diode
- OLED - Organic Light Emitting Diode - Newly developed display technology that could replace LCD. OLED does not require a backlight like LCD displays and therefore is more energy efficient which is important to battery-operated portable devices. It also offers increased contrast and a better viewing angle which means it can be more easily viewed in bright (sunlight) conditions.
- Super CCD - Fuji's honeycomb style chip
- CMOS
- X3 Image Sensor - Foveon's image sensor for digital cameras that captures red, green and blue data at every pixel.