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Firmware

Although the camera's controller coordinates the overall working of the camera and is often referred to as the camera's brain, it does not have any inherent intelligence − it needs to be told how to control the camera. This is done by loading a set of instructions called firmware into the controller. Although the firmware is written by a human, it is not in English or any other human language. Simple electronic chips such as the controller can only understand instructions in terms of 1's and 0's − also called machine language. The instructions in the firmware determine what the controller should do for every possible usage scenario of the camera. There is even an instruction that tells the controller when to stop reading instructions!

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