In just the last twenty years we have seen camera and picture processing technology advance from a mechanical box with a chemical film, to a pocket-sized computer processor capable of holding hundreds, if not thousands of images. The advantages of digital photography are many and it is hard to remember the days of taking ten reels of camera film on holiday, only to leave them unprocessed in a drawer for months afterwards!
A digital camera still uses a lens to capture an image, but then stores that image digitally in an internal memory or on a media card. These cards may hold many gigabytes of information which can equate to thousands of images on a card not much bigger than a thumbnail. Photographs may be taken fairly indiscriminately, as those of poor quality can be easily deleted at no cost or inconvenience. These digital images can also be easily altered, improved and shared by transferring to virtually any home PC and sending via email or the internet.
Although the advantages are significantly more, there are also some disadvantages to digital photography. Photographs are printed much less often and may be viewed more regularly on a computer or laptop screen, rather than being displayed in the home. Digital photo frames have sought to compensate for this, but quality of the displayed images can vary wildly and, as yet, good quality frames are too costly to directly replace a display of several framed images on the wall of a home.
Firscall © 2010