"A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature." In comparing digital and traditional film cameras, here's what I came up with about digital cameras...
Plusses:
- Less marginal cost of film
- Images can be viewed rightaway, or even before taking
- Images can be edited and post-processed in infinite ways
- More photos can be taken and stored without "supplies", ie great storage capacity than the old 36 exposures and endless canisters of film
- More accessible to a wider market, perhaps because of the "point-and-shoot" types
- Photos can be theoretically stored indefinitely with little deterioration
Minuses:
- Sense of artistry or craftsmanship is lost because of easy access for all and sundry
- Irresponsible/indiscriminate use of digital images
- Reliant on user having computer/viewer and any number of accessories and associated costs increase
- Necessary skill is diminished, photo quality is also diminished
- Post processing undermines photography as old art form because errors can be "corrected"
Digital images can be stored using storage devices which include hard drives, floppy disks, thumb drives, memory cards eg Memory Stick, Compact Flash, SD, mini/micro SD, CD-ROMs, DVD-RW, transferred and manipulated using other communications technology. They can be transferred via networking (ie LAN, intranet, WAN), physically copying on and off a computer, via the internet (email, upload/download). They can be processed using a huge range of software.
Because this is so prevalent, it is important to consider the ethical issues. For example, consent of the human subject for the photo to be used in commercial purposes is legally obligated, but morally and ethically there are considerations around disseminating for any purpose, and especially in the event of uncontrolled distribution, eg once it's on the WWW it's out of your control. Issues also arise around copyright if the subject is an object with copyright "remediating". Regulation is difficult to implement and enforce especially if it no longer has to do with traditional "suppliers" controlling distribution but is now up to "consumers" to exercise personal integrity when acquiring images from the "public sphere". There is no one to implement any other person's right for compensation in exchange for use anymore, unlike in a shop. How can we regulate what every person does at home on their personal computers?
In occupational therapy practice digital images may be used on websites, for education and training of staff and clients, such as to illustrate techniques or equipment, for online catalogues of suppliers and on blogs of practitioners.
Flickr is a service that allows users to store pictures and videos, edit them online using editing tools, share content with others, place tags on images, form groups with other users, create albums and slideshows. Other than Flickr, there is also Picasa, which I like for how easily I can post pictures onto blogs.
Optical zoom works like a zoom lens on a film camera whereby the focal length is changed and the subject appears larger in the viewfinder. On the other hand, digital zoom is applied after the photograph is taken by magnifying a selected area of the original photograph. This results in a loss of picture quality and the more the picture is digitally magnified, the greater the loss of quality shows.
A pixel is a contraction of "picture element" and is the smallest unit a digital picture is made up of, or a dot on the computer screen. This is a unit used for measuring picture quality or resolution. The greater the resolution, or the greater the number of dots, the better the picture quality (and to link to above, the more you can digitally zoom before you perceive the grainy-ness of the image). A megapixel is a million pixels.
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