Term for someone who acquires an image
The author of an image is called its author.
That includes digital images acquired with a digital camera, microscope, telescope or any other instrument that will produce an image. Go to Wikimedia Commons, navigate to a digital image of your choosing produced with an instrument of your liking, and see for yourself.
I think the best word for this is photographer. You can find examples of people referring to astrophotography or electron microscope photography:
Scharf started tinkering with electron microscopes after hours in a lab where he worked as an electronics engineer in the 1970s. Back then, most electron microscope photographers took out-of-focus photos of dead and dusty specimens. — Inside the Lab of an Electron Microscope Photographer
The problem is that most photography is the standard camera sort, with visible light used to image regular objects, and we lack a commonly-used word to delimit this particular subset. But there are no clear boundaries between zoom lenses and telescopes, or macro lenses and microscopes, so all the images are presumably taken by photographers.
Probably image/imaging technician is close to what you are looking for. The term is often used in medical context but it may also refer to a wider context:
- Imaging technicians are more specifically known by the type of equipment they operate, and include X-ray technicians, magnetic resonance imaging techs, diagnostic medical sonographers and radiologic techs. Although these machines use different methods, they all help physicians assess medical conditions by displaying images of the interior of the human body.
Also , Digital image technician
- Prior to the DIT position, several other positions, such as Video Controller, Video Shader or Video Engineer, performed similar functions of exposure and color control over the live video image. While these positions continue to exist, especially in live broadcast and studio television, the DIT position has become entrenched in Cinema, Commercials and Higher End television.
Source:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_imaging_technician