By its nature, a digital device segments raw data into distinct datums. However, that is not the only change that such devices make in interpreting information. Colors are sometimes altered, as are intensity levels, to form a more pleasing photograph. While this is an acceptable practice for creating art, it is not for accurately recording information. I plan to find out how exactly a digital camera operates in general, to explore the specific changes made by the digital camera at the lab, and to determine how to minamize such problems.

The methods I plan to use in evaluating the usefulness of the digital camera are researching the web for general information and creating experiments for specific information. The experiments I will create will involve taking photographs, and comparing them to known properties of light. This will involve copying and saving the pictures as greyscale .pgm files, which will enable me to format and interpret the intensity values for each pixel, which will subsiquently be graphed. These will then be compared to Fraunhofer's and Fresnel's diffraction patterns and other models for the behavior of light. A similar process will be followed when analyzing the effect the camera has on colors, except that the file will not be saved in greyscale. Through these processes, I will discover the severity of the problems inherent in using a digital camera to record information, and what solutions, if any, are available to improve the reliability of the medium.