An image sensor is a gadget that converts an optical image to an electrical signal. It is commonly utilized in digital cameras and other imaging devices. Early sensors were video camera tubes but a new one is generally a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a suitable metal-oxide semiconductor active-pixel sensor.

The Charge-Coupled Device or CCD and the CMOS, or complementary metal-oxide semiconductor are sometimes viewed as rival technologies. Nevertheless each basically has its own strengths and drawbacks so that one is more acceptable than the other is dependent on the application. There are differences in their progress in lens technology and their compatibilities which is causing a new disagreement between the 2 technologies which warrant further debate. CCD sensors were developed especially for the camera industry while CMOS traces it's beginnings to standard technology already in use in areas like memory chips within computers.

Today, modern CMOS sensors are progressing in technology and the quality is getting better massively. A CCD sensor offers slightly better light sensitiveness and produces less noise than CMOS sensors. Better light sensitiveness means better image-quality in low light conditions. Apropos moving forward in technical advancement and having the ability to record clearer and brighter photographs in challenging conditions, the flexibility of a digital CCD sensor means more upside. The disadvantage is that CCD sensors are way more costly and harder to build into a camera. Also, a CCD sensor uses much more power, in a number of cases 100 times more, than the equivalent CMOS sensor. Latest technological development is quickly making the CMOS sensor a close rival to the CCD sensor apropos image-quality.

CMOS based cameras are cheaper priced as the CMOS sensors make it much easier to build the cameras around them. Relative to the CCDs, CMOS sensors are far more flexible to integration probabilities and functions and have a quicker readout. They also need less energy and need a smaller system size. Mega pixel CMOS sensors are miles more common commercially than mega pixel CCD sensors and far less costly.