If you own a digital camera and have paid attention to how the photos you take are stored, you may have noticed that they are stored in a DCIM folder. What you may not realize is that virtually every digital camera, whether it is a pocket camera or a professional DSLR, uses the same folder.
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DCIM stands for Digital Camera Images, which probably makes this folder a bit more logical. Something like Photos or Images would be much clearer and easier to recognize, but there is a reason for this decision.
The consistent naming of the storage location for photos on digital cameras as DCIM was defined as part of the DCF (Design Rule for Camera File System) specifications. These have been adopted by so many camera manufacturers that it has virtually become an industry standard.
Because the DCF specification is so general, developers of the photo management software on your computer and the photo editing and sharing apps you've downloaded on your phone all program their tools to point photo searches to the DCIM folder.
