Not so long ago, digital cameras were only used by insurance adjusters, real estate agents, and newspaper photographers. This was the case because digital cameras were very expensive. Nowadays, digital cameras are becoming very popular and have dropped considerably in price. You will learn how to choose the right camera, battery, memory, resolution, and more. Like most electronics, there are accessories that you should consider purchasing, I will guide you through each one of them.
Why Digital?
Recently, there was a camera revolution; consumer digital cameras were capable of exceeding the quality in prints compared to traditional film cameras. In addition, prices for digital cameras have plummeted dramatically over the years. It used to cost thousands of dollars for newspaper companies to buy a digital camera. Nowadays, for a couple hundred dollars you can get an affordable camera, which is capable of producing high quality prints.
Advantages for shooting in Digital:
1. No Film
Conventional cameras always film, which was costly because you have to buy a new roll of film every time you wanted to take pictures. Digital cameras are also environmentally friendly because you won’t waste film. Another advantages is that digital photographs won’t degrade.
2. Cost effective
The case has been, once you used up the film, you’ll have to go to your photo finisher and print every picture, without knowing how it turned out. But, with digital cameras you can choose the pictures you want to print.
3. Instant Gratification
This is probably the most important advantage because, once you take the photograph, you get to see it on the camera’s display. Then, you can decide if you want to keep the picture or delete it.
4. Advanced Editing
You can do a lot once you get your pictures onto the computer. For instance, you can adjust the brightness and contrast; add flash, fix red-eye, and etc. Furthermore, you can be very creative when you edit the photos, like add titles, captions, change backgrounds, and more.
Disadvantages:
1. Shutter Lag
There is a small lag time of one or two seconds on most digital cameras. This is problematic because you might miss the perfect shot by even a couple of milliseconds. It is becoming less of a problem now with new cameras. You can prevent this problem by taking a burst of images at a time, this will allow you to minimize the shutter lag.
2. Heavy Battery Usage
Digital cameras tend to use a lot of power, which means they usually have a short battery life. To minimize this issue, you can turn off the LCD when it is not in use. Furthermore, on some cameras, you can bring down the brightness on the LCD to conserve power.
3. Lower Print Quality
When you are comparing digital prints and conventional film prints, there will be a difference when you make large poster prints. This happens because the sensor in digital cameras isn’t as high quality as film cameras. Technology is improving daily and this gap in quality is narrowing quickly.