The picture qualilty of film (analogue) is higher than digital and the images are sharper. The reason is due to the chemical reaction which occurs when light from the shutter falls on the film. The result is an exact, crisp & inverted (negative) representation of the object. This is not possible with digital.
With digital photography, the film is replaced by a charged coupled device (CCD) which contain tiny grids containing millions of photosensitive elements. When the picture is clicked, a ray of light falls on the photosentive elements which register a specific intensity of light as an electrical charge. The electrical charge allows an analogue-digital converter to transfer the image into digital data. To determine the colour of a pixel, the camera software makes a calculated guess based on registered values by 3 surrounding photosentive elements. This is what reduces the level of detail and the quality of the image.
The technology of digital cameras makes it easier for storing, editing and deleting photo's. You no longer get surprises (sometimes nasty ones!) when you get a film developed and see what the photo really looks like. I'm always so sure I looked better than that on the day! There are no delays with digital photography, you take the shot, see it, share it, print it or delete it - instantly. There is also a cost cutting benefit as you only print what you really want. Sharing of digital photo's is very easy (well once you master software), you can email - make up slide shows and edit on your computer.
A certain amount of digital images can be stored on your camera or many on the hard drive of your computer. Flickr.com is a site in which you can store up to 200 photo's for free. Photo's can be manipulated via sofware packages in what is called digital enhancement. In actual fact they can be altered for the worse rather than the better, which I think may well be the case in gossip magazines! Photo's can be cropped and placed onto different backgrounds, inferring you were somewhere or with people you really weren't!
Apart from the better quality film produces, other benefits are that you have more time to think about the composition of the picture. Film is more precious and you take fewer and more deliberate photos. There is the element of surprise and anticipation in getting a film developed - waiting to see if your photos are as good as you'd hoped. After speaking to a friend who is an avid photographer, he made the comment that there is nothing quite like developing your own film. Watching your creation come to life in front of your eyes in a basin of water under red lights is an amazing experience, which sadly is becoming history.
It seems there is an ongoing and interesting debate regarding film versus digital photograpy. Here is a link to an interesting website I came across which discusses this issue. http://desktoppub.about.com/od/scanninggraphics/a/dig_trad_photos.htm
Of course the ease of transferring and sharing of digital information brings up ethical issues as discussed in previous blog regarding exploitation and exposure. Privacy is the greatest issue I envisage. You can post photo's of yourself and/or your friends and family on Facebook or other sites where they may be viewed by many people without your knowledge. While photographing your own child at a playground you could inadvertently capture another child in that image. Apparently it is becoming common for mobile phones with camera's to be banned from playgrounds & swimming pool complexes, due to the concern of the distribution of child pornography. I find this to be a particularly sad reflection of the society we live in and a definite negative to advances in digial camera technology.With regards of Occupational Therapy (OT) digital images could be included in reports to accurately show what alterations may be required for a client. Digital images could be used to show improvement in a clients function. Perhaps digital manipulation could show how possible alterations could look.
Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application, where you can store up to 200 photo's for free. Flickr allows you to upload, organise and edit photo's. You can also make cards, photo book, dvd's and other creative projects. Picasa http://picasa.google.com/ is another photo storage website which offers similar services to Flickr.
Optical zoom uses optics (the lens) to bring a subject closer and larger. Digital zoom is an invention of digital cameras. It is not really a zoom, it enlarges a portion of a picture, croping that portion and enlarging while cutting out part of the picture. This simulates zoom, but is inferior in quality of the image compared to optical zoom. http://photoxels.com/digital-photography-tutorials/optical-digital-zoom
A Megapixel is 1 million pixels. This indicates the number of pixels in an image. Pixel means Picture Element. Megapixels are used to indicate image sensor elements of digital cameras or display elements of digital displays.
Since starting this paper I have purchased my first digital camera! Quite exciting really, as I think I may have been the last person in the world to be still using a camera with a film. I was always very proud of my little happy snappy Yashica T4 with it's Carl Zeiss lens. So I have now upgraded to a little Fujifilm digital camera with 10.2 megapixels and a 3x optical zoom. Part of my criteria when buying a camera is for it to be small enough to fit in my handbag. My 6 year old daughter and I have been having a lot of fun using it and now there are no surprises for me when I get the films developed!
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