Articles on Digital Matters:

Digital Camera vs. Film - Pros and Cons

Consumers have been pretty receptive to the lower priced “point and shoot” models (some 5 million digital cameras were sold in the U.S. during the Christmas 2005 holiday season), but there are still some holdouts.

Great strides have been made in digital technology over the past few years, but more sophisticated digital cameras have only recently come down in price enough to attract the “serious amateur” market. In the past, the price of high-end digital camera equipment was more suited to the professional who could turn that investment into an income source.

Even traditional film buffs are slowly coming around to the benefits of digital photography. Among the holdouts, the chief problem seems to be confusion. There are so many choices, with a broad range of options, and just as many price ranges.

It’s cheaper not to make a decision, than to make a mistake.

They get lost in the terminology, and have reservations about the quality of digital photos and about the reliability of the digital cameras. With the whirlwind of innovation flooding our lives everyday, it’s become really difficult to keep up.

Technology advances, prices come down, and a deal today may be obsolete tomorrow. At least that’s what worries many potential digital camera owners.

So let’s look at five of the most common questions about digital camera photography to shed some light on the matter, for those who are hesitant about this new technology, or who have dismissed it as a mere fad.

1. Do digital cameras produce quality photos?

Digital photos can be displayed at very high resolutions, and could easily surpass conventional photographs, but many have seen poorer quality images. Early color printers could be used to print color photos from digital cameras, but the quality just wasn’t there. Blurry images on low-grade computer monitors or on the small LCD screens of the cameras themselves, do nothing to increase your confidence.

But view the high resolution images available from today’s digital cameras on a capable monitor or after being printed on one of the newer photo quality printers (using photo quality paper) and you’ll see the crystal clear quality of what is available today.

2. How durable are digital camera photos?

Digital camera photos are not stored on film. They’re stored on electronic memory devices that actually require much less care than negative film.

As long as reasonable care is taken of the particular storage device, there shouldn’t be any problems with protecting images caught on a digital camera, and you can easily make copies of the digital image files on your computer or even burn them to a CD - an option that isn’t available with film.

3. Are digital camera photos more expensive to process?

Not anymore. First, you can eliminate any poor images before printing and only pay for those that you print. With “easy share” technology and photo quality printers now available, it is both affordable and convenient to print digital camera photos.

You can even do the task yourself, in the comfort of your own home - without buying expensive development chemicals that are required for film processing! Or, you can send your images electronically to a professional processor, and receive professionally produced photos back in the mail in just a few days.

4. Can I get different effects with a digital camera?

That depends on the digital camera. High end models have built-in features that allow different kinds of effects. But even if your digital camera doesn’t have these advanced features, you can always manipulate the photographs on your desktop computer, using any image editing software.
5. Are zooming features comparable?

Here digital cameras actually have a distinct advantage over film cameras. While cheaper digital cameras may only have digital zoom (which is really just a form of in-camera enlargement that results in a lower resolution original image), high end models are available with both digital and optical zooming.

When shopping for your digital camera, give priority to the optical zoom capability and buy the highest power optical zoom that fits within your budget. Digital zoom is a nice extra, but the effects can easily be replicated during the “processing” of the image on your computer, prior to printing the images.

Brandon Layne
11 Mar 2007

As a “serious amateur”, Brandon Layne uses both film and digital photography primarily for fast action and nature shots, and publishes tips and techniques for digital photography at http://digitalfotoinfo.com. Read his tips on digital photography and learn to shoot better photos with your digital camera.

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Using a Digital Camera Panoramic Photography Mode

Panoramic digital photos cover a wide angle of view. In its extreme a panoramic photo can cover 360 degrees of view. Such panoramic photos are for example taken from a sky scraper to convey the view it provides. Most new digital cameras provide a panoramic mode that supports such photography.


There is no formal or definitive definition of what a panoramic photo is. It is common practice to define panoramic photos as such that cover a wide angle of view. How wide? A common definition is “wider than our eyes can see” – or in other worlds – provide an artificial view that otherwise we could not have gotten by just looking at the scene (without moving our head left and right or up and down of course). Panoramic digital photos can be taken in a single shot using special panoramic wide angle lenses. This technique is limited of course as for example a 360 degree panoramic photo can not be taken this way.


Another way in which panoramic photos are created is in segments – a few photos are taken in series and are later attached to each other to create one big panoramic photo. The process of attaching the photos together is fast and easy thanks to modern digital photo processing software (as long as you're following some guidelines when taking the photos). Panoramic photos are not limited to capturing landscape or wide angle view. They can be very useful when capturing objects that are just too big to be captured from where you stand. For example if you are standing too close to a tall tower and can not retreat to a farther position – using panoramic photography will enable you to capture the complete tower (in 2 or more shots).


Most digital cameras support a special panoramic mode. In this mode the camera optimizes its optical settings for panoramic wide angle photography. But more than just setting the optical parameters the camera also provides tools that allow you to more easily take the photos series and later on stitch them together. When put in panoramic mode the camera will first let you choose if you plan to take a horizontal panoramic photo (i.e. taking photos from left to right or right to left while keeping the vertical position fixed) or to take a vertical panoramic photo (i.e. taking the photos from bottom to top or top to bottom while keeping the horizontal position fixed). You can also choose a combination.


After you choose the panoramic mode – the camera will let you start taking the photos. On its LCD screen you would always see the previous photo you took and the new photo you are taking. This allows you to easily compose each photo in a way that it complements the previous one. You would also want to make sure the photo overlaps a bit with the previous photo – this allows for easier photo stitching later on. The camera also names the digital photos files in a special format that further helps stitching. Photo stitching can be easily done on a computer at home. Many digital cameras come with a photo stitching software. If your digital camera did not come with one you can find either free or low priced commercial software that can stitch single photos. Basically what the photo stitching software does is: based on the photo file names it orders the photos in their right order. Then it identifies the overlapping areas in each pair of photos and places the photos in a way that these overlapping areas match (this is why having a bit of overlap is important). The final step is to attach all those pairs of files and create a single panoramic digital photo.


It is a good practice to use a tripod when taking panoramic photos. A tripod will help you maintaining either a fixed horizontal or a fixed vertical position. Also it is good practice to keep the optical settings fixed between shots and to make sure that the lighting stays the same. As always practice makes perfect – go and experiment with panoramic photography and master your digital camera panoramic mode.

Ziv Haparnas
19 Mar 2007

Mr. Haparnas writes about practical technology and science issues. Information about photography and photo prints is on printrates.com - your home for Canon eos photo printing . Ziv Haparnas is a veteran technologist

Digital Camera Printers

The digital camera is not meant only for capturing images and storing them on the computer memory disks. The real effect comes from the hard copy of those fantastic images taken by the users, that is the printed photographs! In order to get the printer copy of the images a very important device necessary is the printer. The digital image printing requires a few numbers of components that comprises the total process of printing. This discussion is thus primarily focused towards analyzing and understanding this whole experience of digital camera printers.

Scrutinizing in some more detail, it can be observed that in digital photography some really good and fantastic one-trick-pony printers have filled up the market that are exclusively designed for the sake of printing digital camera photos. These printers are not for the purpose of printing everyday documents, simply because their cartridges and photo paper, that are sold together in single boxes, are not cheap and thereby economic for such purposes. Thus they are solely for the reason of getting the images into physical paper with a high degree of perfection and elevated quality. In these printers the ink and paper are by and large sold together in single boxes, and the average print costs to around 30 to 70 cents. However the biggest advantage remains that these printers themselves are inexpensive.

Looking at the advantages of these digital camera printers, the very first and the most significant one is that these printers do not require a computer for their functioning. They have the ability of printing directly from the digital camera, which enables the users to take and use them on the road too! A few examples of such great printers are Canon's Selphy DS700 and CP330; the Olympus P-10; Sony's FP30 and EX50; Epson's Picture Mate; and Hewlett-Packard's Photo smart 375. Some digital cameras nowadays enable the users to connect them directly to a PictBridge printer using a standard USB cable. And then obtain the printed photographs. Another loom is to include memory-card slots right on the printer as a result the users do not run down the camera's battery while printing.

The above discussion reveals almost all the rudimentary yet important information regarding the digital camera printers and it is expected that more and more users of the digital cameras would appreciate this fantastic device!

Jokob Jelling
05 Apr 2007

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.com. Visit his digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictures with your digicam.