Benefits of Digital Photography

When most people think of photography they may still think of dark rooms, film and chemicals, but in the age of digital photography, those have now become obsolete. Many traditional photographers were skeptical when digital cameras were first introduced, but they quickly saw the benefits of them and they have been widely and for the most part enthusiastically embraced by even the "old timers" in the photography business.

The fundamentals of photography remain the same regardless of the type of camera used. They both still capture an image seen through a lens and taken by depressing a shutter. The difference is in how a digital camera  converts and then stores the image taken versus how it was done with a film camera.

With a film camera, incoming light rays react with the chemical coating on the film and form an image. That image is then developed in a dark room into a what is called a "negative". This negative is turned into a positive by the process of passing light through it and onto a light sensitive paper  resulting in a photograph.

With a digital camera, this process is completely different. Light coming in through the camera lens falls on electronic sensors which are made of what are called "charged coupling devices". These sensors then convert the light into electrical impulses. The image is captured on a screen which  is  comprised of millions of pixels or picture elements which each pixel being a CCD. The impulses are processed instantaneously, then converted to a digital image and finally displayed on the screen in addition to being stored on a memory card.

The larger the number of pixels, the better the quality of the photograph. That is why most professional digital photographers purchase as high as mega pixel camera as their budget will allow and often move up to a higher mega pixel camera as their business becomes more profitable. The higher the mega pixel of the camera, the better the quality of prints made from the images, so for clients wanting prints, the mega pixel of the camera is very important.

One of the main benefits of digital photography over traditional film photography is not having to develop the film. The images can be transferred to a computer immediately. A second benefit is not having to pay for film which can't be reused. Digital cameras use memory cards which can be used over and over many times. While they are initially more expensive, their repeated use makes them much more affordable in the long term than film. A third benefit is that digital photos can be corrected and edited in photo editing programs while there was little that could be done to correct or change film images. This benefits means that if the photographer didn't get the color just right or accidentally got something distracting in the background, those can easily be corrected without having to re-shoot the photograph.