Photography is a way of life for some and at least a part of life for everyone else. In this day and age, technological advances await us at every turn, and the field of photography is no exception. Cameras have gone digital, and the potential is astounding. The following will take a look at some of the differences in the old and new ways, and weigh them out as either pros or cons of digital photography.

Scientifically speaking, the differences between the two are enormous. With film photography, light traveling through the camera’s lens is actually burning the images onto the film. With digital photography, the light of the images is being encoded as binary data and stored in memory as with a computer. These differences, while huge, can be unimportant to some though. No one is actually interested in the technical aspect of how the cameras work. The photographer is more interested in what it means to him in regard to the pictures he can take and what he can do with them.

One of the primary advantages of digital photography is versatility. Digital cameras can record not only the still images of film cameras, but also motion pictures and audio in some cases. While a film camera can be a specialized piece of equipment for taking still pictures, digital cameras can offer you an entire range of different equipment, all in the palm of your hand.

Digital cameras are also commonly found on other pieces of equipment. As technology advances, cellular telephones and MP3 music players now often have built-in cameras, which are always digital. This may offer some extra convenience to digital camera users, considering that they can decrease the overall number of devices that they must carry with them and use.

Printing your pictures is also very different from digital to film photography. In both cases, though, you have many options. Professional film photographers may develop their prints on their own, in their very own dark room. Amateur or casual film photographers may simply drop their film off at a one-hour photo place. With digital, your pictures are recorded as electronic data, so you can use your computer to print them. Or, if you prefer, you can still drop them off at a photo shop and have it done for you. So as far as printing goes, it seems it is up to you how deeply you want to dive in. Both film and digital offer you a range of options, from the hands-on to letting others do it for you.

So in the end, choosing between digital and film may mean considering the application. Hobbyists may stick to film, while technology buffs and burgeoning photographers will choose the brave new world of digital. Either way, it looks like both styles of photography are going to be around for awhile to come.

About the Author

Markus writes and publishes articles about Digital photography , and other unbiased topics on Independent-views.com.

Besides an improperly exposed photo, the other most common mistake beginning photographers (and sometimes the pros) make is not getting a photo that is in sharp focus. There are times when you may want to have an intentional blur in your photo ? perhaps to show motion. But most of the time, the sharper your photo the better. The automatic exposure feature of your digital camera is often good enough to for a sharp photo. There are times, however, when you will want to take control of your camera?s settings to get an even better picture. Here are some tips to help you consistently take sharper photos.

1. Choose the right shutter speed ? Shutter speed means how long the shutter of your digital camera stays open. It?s expressed as a fraction of a second, such as 1/30th or 160th or 1/400th. The slower the shutter speed, the longer the shutter is open, and the more likely your are to get a blurred picture. If your digital camera is in automatic mode, make sure the shutter speed the camera is showing is at least 1/125th. It?s very hard to do get a sharp photo at a slower speed. For moving objects, you?ll need a setting of at least 1/400th to stop the motion. If the auto mode is not showing a fast enough shutter speed, switch the camera to the shutter priority setting and set the shutter speed manually.

2. Choose the right aperture setting ? The aperture setting is how wide the shutter opens when you take a short with your digital camera. It is a trade-off. If you increase the shutter speed to prevent blurring, the shutter must open wider to let in enough light because of the reduced time it is open. If the opening is larger for a faster shutter speed, the you may loose some depth of field, which is whether objects close to your and further away from you are in focus at the same time. To maximize depth of field, shoot with the slowest shutter speed that is appropriate to the situation. If you?re shooting an object that?s not moving, set a small aperture. But if you?re shooting a moving object, you may have to use a higher shutter speed. You may loose some depth of field, but this may not be a problem if the object you?re shooting is what?s really important in your photo and not what?s in the background also.

3. Minimize camera movements ? If you know you?ll be in a situation where you?ll have to shoot under low light conditions with a slow shutter speed, use a tripod. You can also use a tripod on a sunny day to minimize camera moment to allow you to shoot with a small aperture and a slower shutter speed for greater depth of field. Most professional nature and landscape photos you see were done with a tripod.

4. Follow your object ? If you?re shooting a moving object, try planting your feet solidly and bracing your arms tightly against your sides, and follow the moving object by turning your body. This can keep your subject in focus, although your background will be blurred.

This information is Copyright January 2006 by http://www.santaclausca.com and Loring Windblad. References for this article include the author’s personal knowledge and experience. Additional information references with first article. This article may be freely copied and used on other web sites only if it is copied complete with all links and text, including this header, intact and unchanged except for minor improvements such as misspellings and typos.

OK, you have read my article Digital Photography: The Basics, and checked out all the references above and their good information, and you are ready to decide on your new camera. The final pieces of choosing your digital camera are determining just what you are going to use the camera for and how much money you have available to invest in your camera. Your considerations should be 1) your purpose for using the camera, 2) quality of product (particularly the lens), 3) megapixel rating of the camera and 4) buy the best camera you can afford.

Are you really ready to buy just yet? Well, maybe, then again, maybe not? Your overriding consideration for this purchase must be quality of image. Almost equally of importance is your intended use. Are you going into photography as a professional? As an amateur? To make video records? Still image records? A combination of still and video? How much local processing will you be doing on your pictures – i.e., color corrections, readying them for internet use, putting them into just libraries or creating presentations with them? How many pictures will you be taking at a time; i.e., how much memory will you need for your camera before you dump the pictures onto your computer?

Do you need a video camera which will provide JPG stills? Do you need a video camera which will provide both JPG stills and MPG video as well as regular video? Do you need a still camera (JPG) which will provide you AVI or MPG video clips? Or do you need a professional quality SLR which will provide JPG still images only?

Simply saying “I’m going to get the best, most expensive, digital SLR I can find” doe not mean this camera will meet your photographic needs. What if you want, or need, both digital stills and digital video? Check both of my video presentations at http://www.santaclausca.com. Note the sound problems in the first one which has partially been corrected in the second one.

First, I am no longer involved in professional photography except coincidentally. So I guess that means “Yes, I am involved in professional photography” – at least as far as the above link goes, with my Santa Claus work. We started with my wanting a good quality 35mm SLR when we got married. And I replaced it with a better one a few years later. Then we decided we wanted to add video, and got a high-end JVC VHS camcorder, one of the new smaller ones. A few years into that and we decided to go with digital video. We went with a Sony TRV 140. It gives us Digital Video on Digital 8 tape; it also provides us with JPG still images in the 640×480 range at about 125 kb each and 15-second video MPG, both on the “memory stick”. However, the “quality” of the still images is the equal of a 2 to 4 megapixel still camera which produces images in the .6 to 1.2 megabyte range.

This was such a great improvement over the VHS camcorder that I purchased a second Sony TRV 150 a year later, which is even better in some respects. Image quality is very high. We can make a video and take still images without interrupting the video at all. We can make 1-minute long video MPG directly on the memory stick with the JPG images. And with our new computers we can take the video output directly off the camera and onto our computers in a digital video format.

I added a cheap Mercury 3.1 mp digital camera and it was nice but overall very unsatisfactory, and very slow recovering from taking a picture and getting ready for the next picture. I found a discontinued Minolta 2 mp digital camera for a reasonable price that actually took better pictures, had a 3X optical zoom lens (the equivalent of 35mm to 135mm lens on a 35mm SLR) and was not so slow on recovery and readying as the Mercury. It was also less susceptible to blurring if you did not hold it perfectly still – a better shutter action.

Later I found on an eBay auction a Fuji 2.2 mp digital camera which I accidentally won high bid on? Hah! That’ll teach me to play around with bidding on my account before I know what I’m doing. It could have been a financial disaster but I knew the price of the camera retail ($299) and the price I bid ($150) and I actually got a pretty good deal. Particularly when there were 9 others of the same Fuji model and none of them went for under $220 each.

I have learned some differences between my Minolta and Fuji. These include 4 AA batteries for the Fuji and 2 AA batteries for the Minolta. This boils down to a brighter flash and better flash results from the Fuji over the Minolta. It also makes for slightly less lag time moving from one function to the next and a faster shutter time (less delay) when you take a picture. The resultant pictures are about 865 mb compared to 675 mb from the Minolta. But if I need audio on the AVI video clips the Fuji does not provide it. I have to use the Minolta for audio tracks on the video clips.

I’m actually very satisfied with both cameras, and with the two Sony digital video cameras as well. And while the digital still image quality from the Sony jpg’s is very high, the 125 kb size does not allow printing of anything larger than 4″x6″ while I can print very satisfactory 8″x10″ pictures from both the Fuji and Minolta cameras. I have two 256 MB SD memory sticks for the Fuji and Minolta digital cameras, each of which provides about 285 pictures. Nice for trips somewhere. And I have a 128 MB and 64 MB chip as well.

As to the Sony video cameras, they do come in handy. We do most of our picture taking with the Memory Stick and JPG/MPG pictures and video clips. This is a lot of fun and makes for nice memories. A few times, however, I have been called upon to take videos of presentations, 1-2-3 hours long. The Sony video cameras come in very handy for those, too. But on trips or traveling around, my sweetie usually carries the Sony while I carry the digital and film still cameras.

We actually chose the Hi8 digital format when we purchased our Sony cameras a few years ago; were we to make the same decisions today we would simply go with the straight digital format instead of Hi8. For the Sony’s, we have two 64 MB memory sticks for the TRV-140 and we have two 256 MB memory sticks for the TRV-150. If we did no video clips at all the 256 MB memory stick would give us almost 2000 jpg images and make a standard 1-hour-per-tape home movie at the same time. Three hours of video plus 2000 still pictures would cover a very long trip.

However, when I really need versatility and the highest quality possible, I continue to use my 35mm Minolta film camera. It takes about 20 mp of digital picture to equal the quality of the 35mm film results – and we aren’t there yet. The last I checked we were at about 12 mp for digital quality. So I still shoot a lot of film; I just process it anymore by having it put right to CD in digital format, with no prints. I usually start out any trip we take with 10 rolls of 35mm film of the finest grain I can get by with – ASA 100.

So lets take one final look at the “image quality” question. 125 kb from the Sony, as high quality as the lenses are, simply does not compare to 675 or 865 kb from the Minolta and Fuji still cameras. Nor do they compare even remotely to the 925 kb pictures I get from the film. And that’s a bone of contention for me because 2 years ago my film pictures came back at about 1.5 mb each; then all of a sudden a couple of years ago they started coming back at 1.1-1.2 mb and for the last year plus they are in the 900 kb range? The quality is still good, but we’re dealing with pixels here rather than film grain.

If you have any kind of angled surface – i.e., any angle not either vertical or horizontal – you will have a low-resolution result. The reason is that pixels are squares. When my film (dots of color) is converted to digital (squares of color) I lose the higher resolution capability of dots to produce angled and curved lines.

OK, you say, I’ve got 8 megapixels. That gives me much better resolution than your 2.2 megapixels? Well, yes it does but not near as good as my film camera provides! Nor good enough to make 18X24 or 24X30 prints. 12 megapixels still only gives us high quality at 11X14 or perhaps 16X20. The reason is that as the little squares of color become visible they tend to blur the edges of angled and rounded objects whereas the dots from a film negative tend to keep those same lines sharp. So even though the film gives me higher resolution, the conversion to digital format costs me some resolution.

There’s one more important factor that goes into this matter before you decide on your particular camera needs. This is the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom. Let’s say that you get a camera with 3X optical and 4X digital zoom and they “sell you” on this model because it is “effectively 12X zoom”! And well, yes, it is “effectively 12X zoom”! But just what does that mean? Not all that much.

The optical zoom part is the only important factor. Typically a 3X optical zoom on a digital camera would give you a lens that corresponded to 35mm x 135 mm focal length on a 35mm camera – i.e., wide angle to short telephoto (actually what used to be known as a “portrait” lens). What the digital feature actually does is not enlarge your image but enlarge your pixels. This actually reduces the quality of the resultant picture because it is reducing the total number of pixels per square inch in your final product. The other downside of digital zoom is that you must put your camera on a tripod and make sure you don’t jiggle it when you snap the shutter – otherwise you will definitely get blurred pictures.

As you can see, choosing your camera or cameras to fit your needs is not all that quick and easy and may actually involve owning more than one camera. Maybe several cameras. But for your still image work you should choose a camera that has at least 6X to 10X optical zoom (totally disregarding any claims for digital zoom) and 4-5 megapixels or larger image. Also, make sure that the camera has a mike pickup for digital video sequences. You don’t need to use this capability but you can’t use it if you don’t have it.

So now you have your cameras and you need to know what to do with the pictures? Well, see my next article, Digital Photography: Using Windows XP (to manage your digital pictures).

About the Author

Loring Windblad worked as a freelance photographer for more than 20 years. He and his wife presently own and regularly use 1 VHS camcorder, 2 digital 8 camcorders and two digital still cameras. His latest business endeavor is at: http://www.santaclausca.com