The inner workings of a camera are much more complex than most people care to know about, but everyone should have a basic understanding of how digital photographs are created.

The ADC is the Analog-to-Digital Converter. After the exposure of a picture ends, the electrons captured in each photosite are converted to a voltage. The ADC takes this analog signal as input, and classifies it into a brightness level represented by a binary number. The output from the ADC is sometimes called an ADU, or Analog-to-Digital Unit, which is a dimensionless unit of measure. The darker regions of a photographed scene will correspond to a low count of electrons, and consequently a low ADU value, while brighter regions correspond to higher ADU values.

The value output by the ADC is limited by its resolution (or bit-depth). This is defined as the smallest incremental voltage that can be recognized by the ADC. It is usually expressed as the number of bits output by the ADC. For example a full-frame sensor with a resolution of 14 bits can convert a given analog signal to one of 2¹⁴ distinct values. This means it has a tonal range of 16384 values, from 0 to 16,383 (2¹⁴-1). An output value is computed based on the following formula:

ADU = (AVM / SV) × 2R

where AVM is the measured analog voltage from the photosite, SV is the system voltage, and R is the resolution of the ADC in bits. For example, for an ADC with a resolution of 8 bits, if AVM=2.7, SV=5.0, and 2⁸, then ADU=138.

Resolution (bits)	Digitizing steps	Digital values
8	256	0..255
10	1024	0.1023
12	4096	0..4095
14	16384	0..16383
16	65536	0..65535

The process is roughly illustrated in Figure 1. using a simple 3-bit, system with 2³ values, 0 to 7. Note that because discrete numbers are being used to count and sample the analog signal, a stepped function is used instead of a continuous one. The deviations the stepped line makes from the linear line at each measurement is the quantization error. The process of converting from analog to digital is of course subject to some errors.

Now it’s starting to get more complicated. There are other things involved, like gain, which is the ratio applied while converting the analog voltage signal to bits. Then there is the least significant bit, which is the smallest change in signal that can be detected.