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0.1 WHY GO DIGITAL? | ||
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Once captured, digital photographs are already in a universal format that makes them incredibly easy to distribute and use. For example, you can insert digital photographs into word processing documents, send them by e-mail to friends, or post them on a Web site where anyone in the world can see them. With many cameras you can immediately see your images on a small LCD screen on the back of the camera, or you can connect the camera to a TV and show them much like a slide show. Some cameras can even be connected to a microscope or telescope to display dramatically enlarged images on a large-screen TV. Digital photography is instant photography without the film costs!
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| A small digital camera is easy to carry so you'll have it when you see things you never expected to see. |
In addition to distributing and displaying photographs, you can also use a photo-editing program such as Photoshop to improve or alter them. For example, you can crop them, remove red-eye, change colors or contrast, and even add and delete elements. It’s like having a darkroom with the lights on and without the chemicals.
If you’re considering going digital, here are a few more reasons to get even more serious.
- Going digital saves you money in the long run by not buying rolls of film and paying for their development.
- Digital cameras instantly show you how your pictures look so you’ll no longer have those disappointments a day or two later when your film is processed.
- You can view images before printing them. If you don’t like what you see, edit them the way you want them or delete them.
- Digital photography doesn’t use the toxic chemicals that often end up flowing down the drain and into our streams, rivers, and lakes.
- No more waiting to finish a roll before processing it. (Or wasting unexposed film when you can’t wait.)
| Once you've captured an image in digital format, you can easily distribute, organize, store, and enhance it. |  |
Digital cameras are becoming more than just cameras. Some digital cameras are capable of capturing not only still photographs, but also sound and even video—they are becoming more like multimedia recorders than pure cameras.
Although it’s both the immediacy and flexibility of digital photography that has made it so popular, there is one aspect that is rarely mentioned. This is the new freedom it gives you to explore creative photography. In the 1870’s when William Henry Jackson was carrying 20 x 24 glass plate negatives around the West on a mule, you can bet he hesitated before he took a photograph. We may not be carrying window-sized glass plates, but you and I also hesitate before taking a picture. We’re always doing a mental calculation "is it worth it?" Subconsciously we’re running down a checklist of costs, times, effort, and so on. During that "decisive moment," the image is often lost or we fail to try new things. We lose the opportunity for creative growth and choose to stay with the familiar that has delivered for us in the past. Surprisingly, Jackson had one big advantage we’ve lost over the last century. If an image didn’t turn out, or if he was out of glass plates, he could just scrape the emulsion off a previously exposed negative, recoat the plate, and try again. Digital photography not only eliminates that nagging "is it worth it?" question, it also returns us to that era of endlessly reusable film (and we don’t need a mule to carry it). Hand the camera to the kids, take weird and unusual angles, shoot without looking through the viewfinder, and ignore all previously held conceptions about how to take photographs. You may be surprised at the photos you get if you exploit this new era of uninhibited shooting.
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| A mule carries William Henry Jackson's photographic outfit. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.. |