applications and considerations

Applications and considerations

With the acceptable image quality and the other advantages of digital photography (particularly the time pressures of vital importance to daily newspapers) the majority of professional news photographers have begun capturing their images with digital cameras.

Digital photography has also been adopted by many amateur snapshot photographers, who take advantage of the convenience of the form when sending images by email, placing them on the World Wide Web, or displaying them in digital picture frames. Digital cameras have also been integrated into many cell phones, although, because of the small lens in most of these phones, the quality of these pictures makes them unsuitable for making even moderate size prints.

Some commercial photographers, and some amateurs interested in artistic photography, have been resistant to using digital rather than film cameras because they believe that the image quality available from a digital camera of a given price is still inferior to that available from a film camera, and the quality of images taken on medium format film is near-impossible to match at any price with a digital camera. Some have expressed a concern that changing computer technology may make digital photographs inaccessible in the future. A related concern in a specialized application is the use of digital photographs in court proceedings, with the added difficulty of demonstrating an image's authenticity. Film can also still be projected for viewing at a much higher optical resolution than even the best digital projectors.

Other commercial photographers, and many amateurs, have enthusiastically embraced digital photography because they believe that its flexibility and lower long-term costs outweigh its initial price disadvantages. Almost all of the cost of digital photography is capital cost, meaning that the cost is for the equipment needed to store and copy the images, and once purchased requires virtually no further expense outlay. Film photography requires continuous expenditure of funds for supplies and developing, although the equipment itself obsolesces less quickly and has a longer service life. Some commercial photographers have also begun moving to digital technology because of the tremendous editing capabilities now offered on computers. The photographer is able to color-balance and manipulate the image in ways that traditional darkroom science cannot offer, although film users can utilize the same technology with a film scanner. With fully color-balanced systems from the camera to the monitor to the printer, the photographer can now print what is actually seen on the screen.

However, digital cameras require batteries that need to be recharged or replaced frequently, and this means that a photographer needs access to electrical outlets. Digital cameras also tend to be much more sensitive to moisture and extreme cold. For this reason, photographers who work in remote areas, such as those who work for National Geographic overwhelmingly favor film SLR cameras. Medium- and large-format film cameras are also still preferred by publications insisting on the very highest detail and resolution, such as Arizona Highways.

Digital photography was used in astronomy long before its use by the general public and had almost completely displaced photographic plates by the early 1980s. Not only are CCDs more sensitive to light than plates, but they have a much more uniform and predictable response, and the information can be downloaded onto a computer for data analysis. The CCDs used in astronomy are similar to those used by the general public, but are generally monochrome and cooled with liquid nitrogen so as to reduce the visual noise caused by heat. Many astronomical instruments have arrays of many CCDs, sometimes totaling almost a billion pixels. Nowadays amateur astronomers also commonly use digital cameras, including the use of webcams for speckle imaging or "video astronomy".