Digital cameras allow you to take a picture, transfer it to your computer, print it out, put it on your Web page, or e-mail it to a friend in just a few minutes time. Digital photography can also open up a whole new world of creativity as you have the ability to crop a picture, add images to it, or change the colors.
The Camera
When Kodak first introduced the digital camera in 1991, it cost $20,000 and weighed 11 pounds. But now you can get a camera for $500 to $1,000 that takes good quality pictures. These cameras are very similar to regular film cameras and are relatively easy to use. They have many of the same automatic features found on film cameras like autofocus, zoom lenses, and flash. They can store many pictures at a time and are small enough to be convenient to carry.
The Image
Image resolution, or the sharpness of the image, depends on the number of pixels or picture elements used to create an image.
The higher the number of pixels, the better the picture quality and the more the camera costs.
Lower resolution cameras have pixel dimensions of 640x480 and are fine for Web documents, e-mailing, or for 4"x6" prints. The Kodak DC50 has a resolution of 756x504 pixels.
Megapixel cameras capture 1 million pixels for greater clarity in larger prints and are becoming more affordable.
The Storage
The biggest difference between film cameras and digitals is what is done with the image once a picture has been taken. Digital cameras don't use film, the image is saved to a storage device, usually a removable storage card.
The number of pictures that can be stored on one card varies with each camera and the degree of resolution selected.
If you want to take more pictures, the storage card can simply be replaced with a new one.
The images are downloaded by hooking the camera to a PC with a serial port.
Some cameras even store pictures on a floppy disk, which can be inserted directly in a PC.
The Future
The digital camera industry is changing rapidly, new cameras are being introduced all the time. As the picture quality improves, and the price drops, they will become more and more popular.