A digital camera (also digicam or camera for short) is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor.

Digital cameras can do things film cameras cannot: displaying images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, storing thousands of images on a single small memory device, recording video with sound, and deleting images to free storage space. Some can crop pictures and perform other elementary image editing. The optical system works the same as in film cameras, typically using a lens with a variable diaphragm to focus light onto an image pickup device. The diaphragm and shutter admit the correct amount of light to the imager, just as with film but the image pickup device is electronic rather than chemical.