Camera Technology at the dawn of digital renascence era

Camera Technology has evolved tremendously in the last 10 years, the proliferation of camera-phones fueling unprecedented advancements on CMOS image sensors. As an emerging field, some of the problems are justified while others are bi-products of the chosen silicon technology and are not fundamental to advancement of image technology. This paper will review block by block some image processing components found in a cell-phone camera today, discussing for each its justification from technology choice vs image processing function, with emphasis on the signal degradation potential. Further, we present computational photography challenges that amplify the requirements for data with high SNR.