Bridge are top-end digicams that physically and ergonomically look like DSLRs and share with them some sophisticated features, but share with compacts the utilization of a fixed lens and a tiny sensor. Like compacts, most use live preview to border the image. Auto-focus is achieved employing the same contrast-detect mechanism, but many bridge cameras feature a manual focus mode, in a few cases employing a separate focus ring, for bigger control. Due to the mix of enormous physical size but a tiny sensor, many of those cameras have extraordinarily highly stipulated lenses with big zoom range and fast aperture, partly compensating for the incapacity to switch lenses. To provide compensation for the reduced sensitiveness of their little sensors, these cameras almost always throw in an image stabilization system to enable longer hand held exposures.

These cameras are often sold as and confused with digital SLR cameras since the appearance has similarities. Bridge cameras decrease the reflex viewing system of DSLRs, have so far been fitted with fixed (non-interchangeable) lenses (though in a few cases accessory wide-angle or telephoto converters can be attached to the lens), and can mostly take flicks with sound. The scene is composed by checking out either the liquid crystal display or the electronic viewfinder (EVF). Most have a longer shutter lag than a real DSLR, but they are literally capable of superb image-quality (with acceptable light) while being more compact and lighter than DSLRs. Top-end models of this sort have equivalent resolutions to low and mid-range DSLRs. Many of those cameras can store photographs in a raw image format, or processed and JPEG compressed, or both. The majority have an inbuilt flash like those found in DSLRs.

When it comes to features, you will find that most bridge camera have a foot firmly in the DSLR camp. While they offer the point-and-shoot easiness of compacts, should you need it, they also have a DSLR-style set of exposure modes, metering patterns and file schemas. Buying a bridge camera certainly will not stop you from shooting using manual exposure, spot metering and the raw file format should you so wish, such functions just perhaps a touch more concealed than they'd be on the standard DSLR. In a similar way, mega-pixel counts are also likelier to be in double digits, though they are not without delay analogous to a DSLR as the sensors are smaller and so will not always deliver similar results.