Basics of Digital Photography

The Basics of Digital Photography

This is a quite often discussed subject "The Basics of Digital Photography". But really there are so many simple things that we miss out while thinking about it. So lets try to focus on them first before we go in the depths of Digital Photography terms.

The very basic thing to know in Digital Photography is that it is "Photography" after all. So all the rules applied to film photography also applies to it. Only the difference it has from old film photography is the way it captures the images.

In film photography the light is allowed to enter from the shutter and drops on the photosensitive film. The film reacts to the light falling onto it and the image is this way captured on the film. And in modern digital cameras the light is allowed to pass the shutter and it is dropped on the photosensitive cell in the camera and this way the images are captured inside the memory chips. Then why this advancement and how exactly it affects the quality of pictures we capture?

The very first thing here to know is that it is digitally captured, the word digitally means, pixel by pixel it is imprinted on the memory card. So the end pictures are resulted in sharper edges. Secondly we can alter the image size as per the requirements. This is what we typically know as pixel size of the camera (remember the imprinted word Megapixels on the camera you purchased?) It signifies how large pictures it can produce without affecting the overall image quality. Generally we take images which fit to the PC screens i.e. of resolution 1024 x 768 px. For this requirement a camera of 6 Megapixels is sufficient. To know more about the Megapixel and how much MegaPixel camera you require visit this page.

There are lot many other settings as welll; that we can fiddle with e.g. ISO, white balance, color schemes, shooting mode like landscape, night portrait etc. We shall talk about these in later posts. But generally these are so useful for different scenarios like shooting in a party hall, marriage/reception, firework shoots, couple photos etc.

The great advantage a digital camera provides over film camera is that we can see the effects of the setting change right then and there and keep taking shots until we are satisfied with the results. It is really a good and useful practice to view the image just captured so that you don't get disappointed with the pictures at the end while creating an album or uploading them on net. Many a times people get disappointed with blur effect due to shaking of hand or overburn effect due to wrong settings of white balance or introduction of noise in poor lighting conditions etc. This you can avoid by simply reviewing the images after you capture them and change the setting to get a better picture.

Key differences between a film camera and a digital camera :

1. Film camera uses photosensitive film to capture the image whereas digital camera uses photosensitive cell to capture the image.

2. Pictures captured by digital camera are sharper than film camera.

3. Development cost is higher in case of film camera where digital camera allows to reuse the same memory card again and again also number of photos that can be captured without replacement of memory card is much much higher than number of photos can be captured on a film.

4. Transfer and maintainance of photos between camera and storage (either on PC or net) is easier in case of digital camera than film camera where the photos are stored as either printed photos or slides.

5. Reviewing the just shooted photo is imediate in case of digital camera which will ensure a right and better capture.

We have seen the basic differences between digital and film photography. The thing to consider is "What exactly I should expect from my camera?" and if you are about to purchase a digital camera you must have been wondering which camera to go for as there are so many brands and models available in market. We shall discuss on this in coming post.....