Digital Photography Basics

Digital photography is becoming popular worldwide both among professional photographers as well as amateur ones. The photos taken through digital photography are of acceptable quality and hence many of the news photographers are also using digital cameras for their professional use. Amateur photographers find digital cameras convenient to use, take pictures and send them over the internet to loved ones.

There is no need for waiting for film development like in conventional film based cameras in digital photography. The images can be viewed instantly on the screen and if found defective another shot can be taken. Digital cameras have capacity to store hundreds of pictures in a small memory chip. The pictures can also be manipulated easily for color, contrast etc. unlike films for which a scanner would be needed.

Some of the digital cameras output pictures in JPEG format only while RAW is another format in which the data from the image sensor is stored without processing. Fixed lens compact digital cameras do not allow changing the zoom lens or the flash while Digital SLR (Single Lens Reflector) cameras operate just like their film based counterpart. They permit mounting of external flashes as well as changing of lens. Camera companies like Canon, Nike etc. are promoting DSLR cameras for use by journalists. Digital photography employs a wide array of lens just the film based ones like normal lens, telephoto lens, wide angle lens etc. depending on the application like landscapes, close ups or portraits. The image stabilization feature in digital cameras takes care of a little shake of the camera while shooting a picture.

DSLR cameras also output RAW images that can be fed into a computer for processing later and converted into other formats like JPEG, TIFF etc. The images can be manipulated for color, contrast, etc. through suitable software. Canon is one of the leading manufacturers of digital cameras. Powershot is popular range of compact digital cameras from the Canon stable. There are a no. of models in the Powershot like the A520, 620, 700 etc. each one of them basically varying from the other in the image resolution in mega pixels and optical zoom capability. Powershot S3 is a middle of the range camera below a DSLR. The Rebel series is a range of SLR cameras. There are digital Rebel XT, EOS 200D and EOS 30D in this range.

Nikon also has a series of digital cameras some of which are priced lower than Canon. D40, D200, and D70 are some of the digital cameras offered by Nikon. Other popular models of digital cameras manufactured by other companies include Cybershot series by Sony, Olympus E-330, HP photosmart R967, Fuji Finepix series etc. The digital camera market is very fluid at present with newer models with better features and compact size being introduced by the day.