Advantages Disadvantages Difference in film
Digital Photography
Photographic technology didn’t change much for the first hundred years, Cameras got smaller and easier to use, lenses grew more powerful, and film quality improved, but people were still taking pictures with a box that focused an image on a light sensitive piece of film. The world apparently was ready for a change.
Barely a decade after they first entered the average consumer’ consciousness (and price range), digital cameras started outselling film camera’s. By early 2005, a staggering 92% of cameras sold were digital cameras. Later in the same year major camera manufactures announced the end of their 35mm film cameras and that they were going to concentrate on digital only.
Film photography giants like Fujifilm, Canon and Nikon are now major players on the digital market but they have been joined by manufacturers from the electronic side, like Sony, HP and Samsung, they all compete by offering dozens of different models with a dizzying array of features. At First sight digital cameras can appear confusing but when all the technical jargon has been stripped away it is relatively straightforward, if you understand a few of the digital camera basics, you can evaluate and take great pictures with just about any camera you pick up.
- No more films to buy or process, A digital camera stores your images on a reusable disc or flash memory, some of which can hold thousands of images before they are full.
- You only keep the images you want. You can delete unwanted images immediately after you have taken them or wait until you have a chance to review all the picture you have taken in that session.
- Image editing software allows you to become a picture editor and graphic artist
- Operating systems like Windows allows you to catalogue your images on you computer
- Greater versatility in what you can do, you pictures can be stored, printed, sent around the world via email or viewed on you T.V.
- Improved options for printing images ie:at home, photo shops, kiosks
- Greater functionality on digital camera’s
Disadvantages
- Set-up costs (which is rapidly decreasing). There is a lot of equipment on the market that are not worth the materials they are made from.
- Printing costs, high quality paper + ink are not cheap and the wear and tear of you printer, however in store printing is already 50% cheaper that film processing.
- Complexity, some areas of digital photography can be quite daunting at first. However a good basic grounding can be picked up reasonably quickly and you do not have to be a professional photographer or computer expert to produce excellent results.
- Emerging technologies. The development of the technology is moving very quickly, so what is cutting edge today may be obsolete in a year. However if you keep waiting for the technology to advance and the price to fall, you may never feel that the time is right.
Difference between Film and Digital
In place of traditional film, a digital camera uses what is known as an image sensor to capture images once light passes through the lens. In the majority of digital cameras the sensor is known as a “Charge Coupled Device” CCD. A CCD is made up of 1000’s of photosites that capture colours as the light passes trough the lens, the colour s are contained in pixels which is processed by the CCD and this information is then passed to the storage medium (memory card). As with most things, different CCDs vary in quality and this is usually expressed as price, You will always get what you pay for. The most important details about a sensor is the quality of the pixels regardless of size (2 million pixels or 10). The box only mentions size but if you buy a strong brand name ie. Fujifilm or Canon you cant go wrong.
(Example of a low quality sensor “a bride in a white wedding dress standing against a white wall, the sensor wont be able to differentiate between the wall and the dress, so the picture will have a girls head popping out of a wall”).
Whatever the type of sensor in a digital camera, it acts in a similar way to film in that it is the medium for collecting light as it passes through the camera lens. Then depending on the camera there is still basic editing functions that need to be performed before it can be sent to to the memory card for storage. This includes converting the file to a suitable format (usually JPEG), correcting the white balance, and sharpening the image.
Advantages