Modes

Many digital cameras have preset modes for different applications. Within the constraints of correct exposure various parameters can be changed, including exposure, aperture, focusing, light metering, white balance, and equivalent sensitivity. For example a portrait might use a wider aperture to render the background out of focus, and would seek out and focus on a human face rather than other image content.

Integration

Many devices include digital cameras built into or integrated into them. For example, mobile phones often include digital cameras; those that do are sometimes known as camera phones. Other small electronic devices (especially those used for communication) such as PDAs, laptops and BlackBerry devices often contain an integral digital camera. Additionally, some digital camcorders contain a digital camera built into them.

Due to the limited storage capacity and general emphasis on convenience rather than image quality in such integrated or converged devices, the vast majority of these devices store images in the lossy but compact JPEG file format.

Image data storage

Most digital cameras utilize some form of removable storage to store image data. While the vast majority of the media types are some form of flash memory (CompactFlash, SD, etc.) there are storage methods that use other technologies such as Microdrives (very small hard disk drives), CD single (185 MB), and 3.5" floppy disks.

Although JPEG is the most common method of compressing image data, there are other methods such as TIFF and RAW (the latter being highly non-standardized across brands and even models of a brand). Most cameras include Exif data that provides metadata about the picture. Such Exif data include aperture, exposure time, focal length, date & time taken, and camera model.

Some of the removable storage technologies include all of the following:

Other formats include:

• Onboard flash memory — Cheap cameras and cameras secondary to the device's main use (such as a camera phone)
• Video Floppy — a 2x2 inch (50 mm × 50 mm) floppy disk used for early analog cameras
• PC Card hard drives — early professional cameras (discontinued)
• Thermal printer — known only in one model of camera that printed images immediately rather than storing
• FP Memory — a 2-4 MB serial flash memory, known from the Mustek/Relisys Dimera low end cameras

Most manufacturers of digital cameras do not provide drivers and software to allow their cameras to work with Linux or other free software. Still, many cameras use the standard USB storage protocol, and are thus easily usable. Other cameras are supported by the gPhoto project.