I had been a semi-professional photographer for some years working with my faithful film based SLR rather than enter the realms of digital photography. I knew very dial and lens and produced results that pleased the eye and when it came to wedding photography, the bride and groom. I photographed many subjects with a great preference for land and seascapes and for quite a while totally resisted the digital photography urge.

One day though, my hand was forced. My trusty SLR had developed a fault and I needed to fill a wedding photography assignment. All I could do was ask a friend if I could borrow their camera. They were quick to help out, but instead of a film based camera all they could provide was a 5 mega pixel digital camera. I was horrified! Time was against me though and my friend ran me through the basic operations of the camera. I set off and covered the wedding with digital ease - no worries about how the prints would turn out as the results appeared right in front of me - that was a BIG benefit!

That was the beginning of discovering a whole new world. I was previously under the impression that digital photography took the creativity out of the shot, but I was wrong. Instead it has simply been a different approach and indeed an approach that can lead to more variety as I manipulate the image on the computer screen instead of in the darkroom. With increasingly more and more able photo editing software packages coming on the market worlds of opportunity have opened up before my eyes. I quickly discovered other benefits. I must have saved a fortune on buying film. I don’t even print all my photographs either. I just have them on my computer to look at now and again or use perhaps as backgrounds on my desktop. After all, how many of us used to take rolls and rolls of film, have all the prints developed, look through the resulting prints expectantly, maybe put a few in a photo album and have the rest take up space in a drawer somewhere and rarely see the light of day? Special prints get loaded onto an SD card and taken to a nearby print shop - I decided that was cheaper than trying to print them on my printer, but you may feel differently.

As a result of borrowing that camera, I decided to take the plunge and bought my own - nothing flash (excuse the pun!), just a reasonable camera with a number of options. Now, without the pressure of having to pay for prints that may not turn out well, I can take the camera almost everywhere I go and capture shots I might have otherwise missed.

I have to confess though that with my particular digital camera, (and I have heard the same said of others), it is a bit of a pain having to cycle through menus to achieve a particular type of shot or meet certain lighting requirements etc., but would I go back to my original SLR? Well, I can’t quite bring myself to part with it. We see to have formed some relationship that I can’t really explain.

If you were to ask my advice about entering digital photography now, I would still have to debate the issue to some extent - after all, holding a few SD cards between your finger and thumb just is not the same has holding onto a wad of photo prints…. I think I will go and caress my old SLR just one more time…

Digital photography or otherwise, author Doug Harvey has been involved in photography from a semi-professional viewpoint for many years and for more informative digital photography articles invites you to visit http://www.betterarticles.co.nr/art/dphotog/Understanding_Digital_Photography.html.

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Digital photography not only means getting photographs immediately, but also sharing them easily and inexpensively with a vast network of people. However, to the traditionalist digital photography means cheapening the time-honored art of photography. What are the pros and cons of digital photography, and how do traditional and digital photography differ?
How the image is captured is the difference between digital and traditional photography. Digital photography cameras act more like computers than traditional cameras. They utilize thousands (or millions) of small squares called pixels to create an image, rather than an image being processed onto a piece of film. Each pixel stores information about the contents of that particular pixel, such as color, brightness and contrast.
Most digital photography cameras have an LCD screen on the back where the photographer can see the picture immediately. This is the biggest plus of digital photography because you are able to see the photo immediately. It also eliminates film and developing costs because you can download the photo to either a computer or a digital picture printer.
Resolution is the biggest drawback to using digital photography rather than traditional photography. Traditional has a higher resolution than digital. However, for many laypeople it isn’t an issue. The […]

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Photo collections - for traditional photographers the phrase conjures thoughts of bound albums and mounds of shoeboxes, stuffed to capacity with 5 x 7 inch pictures. For today’s ever growing ranks of digital photographers however, it brings to mind thoughts of a stamp-sized memory card, a pocket hard drive, or CDs and DVDs. Welcome to the world of digital photography, which is fundamentally changing the way we capture and preserve images.

Digital photography today is a rapidly growing consumer pastime with many advantages versus traditional film-based cameras, including the ability to immediately review, erase, annotate or categorize images, speed and ease of operation, and quality at the high end of the digital photography scale. Although some film cameras can operate without batteries, minus the flash, most consumers are unconcerned with use in wet or poor weather environments and are drawn to digital cameras by all of the advantages that they offer.

Because of this, the entire photography industry is changing to embrace different consumer preferences, including a reduced desire for printed photos. The market for printed photos from film in the United States peaked in 2000 at over 30 billion, and then fell to under 26 billion by 2004. Initially, there were problems with quick-service photography shops “cropping” digital images in order to force them to print properly on the same paper used by film cameras - as more and more people move to digital however, services and products emerge to make it easier to transfer your memories from electronic to tangible.

Some people feel that a picture just isn’t a picture if you can’t put it into a frame (although wireless, internet-enabled miniature LCD ‘picture frames’ ARE available) or store it in a photo album. But many of today’s young people are much more comfortable with technology than their parents and grandparents. It is not uncommon for a college student to feel more secure with electronic images than paper ones.

No one is certain whether digital photography will eventually reduce our demand for photo prints, but it is guaranteed that the way of the future in photography is digital. Additionally, there are far more snapshots being taken than ever before, due to the ease with which they can be reviewed and removed from digital cameras. So whether you’re partial to electronic or shoebox image storage, be ready for photos to get easier, better and cheaper in coming years - and of course, keep smiling.

Caitlin Moore is an avid photographer, and one the editors of dpdigest.com - an informative website dedicated to digital photography, with extensive information about digital SLR cameras, memory cards, special effects filters and more.

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