in answer to FOOLISH Girl's post (here"

Digital cameras- What the hell is it doing in there? 35mm cameras are not a mystery. What the hell is it burning the image on. I can't rap my head around it.

OK: Tech Geek/Nerd to the rescue.

1. Digital Camera:
A 35mm camera takes you image and "saves/burns/exposes" the image to your FILM, which then goes to the store to be DEVELOPED/PROCESSED into Negatives.

Negatives then are exposed onto paper which turns them into photos (positives), and the photos are then printed.

The 35mm camera "saves" the image to film, the same way a DIGITAL camera saves the image to MEMORY or some sort of "flash-card", you insert.

The 35mm camera saves an ANALOG (opposite of digital, and wont discuss here) image (representation) on the film, and is then processed.

The Digital camera takes the SAME image (thru the lens), and instead of focusing the image onto the film that is exposed, uses a CCD (charge coupled device) (same as a Modern day TV camera, or OPPOSITE of a TV)
to take THREE different images of the scene.

...backtrack....Digression
In a TV camera(today=CCD, in the past was vacuum tubes) there are three different sensors that take a picture of a scene, with
either a blue/red or green filter.

If you are old enough, you'll remember the 1st generation color TV's you could put your head against the screen, and actually see the small red/green/blue "holes/thingies that could turn on.
(nowadays, they would be LED's or LCD's, or plasma "thingies", they were then parts of a PICTURE tube).

a) the lens focuses on a "mini" tv-like screen. (actually the CCD!)
b) tiny microscopic thingies inside take three separate B&W photos (think red/green/blue) filters )
c) since this is a DIGITAL camera, the CCD's convert the image from a piece of data into a number, and then translates that number into binary (zero's and ones).

Say our CCD cell (pixel) has captured a image of a period. That cell converts the image into a series of ones and zeros that best represents what that "pixel" would look like.

Now that the pixel/CCD unit has our image converted into a "digital" piece of data, it (along with the other XYZ MB's in the CCD store that image to memory (just like a computer would).
It stores that in you camera in a format that current computers would recognize as a removable (floppy) hard drive.

So our picture of (say, a period) will then be stored in a file on your camera.
a) if you have added external memory to your camera, it will store there, otherwise it stores in the memory BUILT into your camera!

You then go into as an example Google's Picassa, and with your camera connected (or your memory card in a reader on your PC), it will take the photos and transfer them to your PC, and catalog them for you