Applications and Considerations
With the acceptable image quality and the other advantages of digital photography (particularly the time pressures of daily newspapers) the majority of professional news photographers capture their images with digital cameras.
Digital photography has been adopted by many amateur snapshot photographers, who take advantage of the convenience of sending images by email, placing them on the World Wide Web, or displaying them in digital picture frames. The majority of cameras are camera phones integrated into cell phones but their usual small, poor quality lenses and sensors render most of 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 is still inferior to that available from a film camera, and the quality of images taken on medium format film was thought to be impossible to match with a digital camera. Some have expressed a concern that changing computer technology may make digital photographs inaccessible in the future.
A specialized application is the use of digital photographs in court proceedings, with the added difficulty of demonstrating an image's authenticity.
Some high-end film can also be projected for viewing at a much higher optical resolution than even the best video projectors. Some professional photographers resist the use of digital cameras because of their low frame rate. Storing an 8MP image takes a lot of time and therefore, in some applications digital cameras are not currently appropriate.
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 does not outdate so quickly and has a longer service life.
Some commercial photographers use digital technology because of the tremendous editing capabilities now offered on computers. The photographer is able to color-balance and otherwise manipulate the image in ways that traditional darkroom techniques cannot offer, or are far more laborious in the darkroom. With fully color-balanced systems from the camera to the monitor to the printer, the photographer can now supply, either as a print or as a computer display, what is actually seen on the photographer's screen. Film users can use a film scanner, thus mixing the two technologies. Rapid advances in the technologies have resulted in many specialised abbreviations and initialisms being freely used in publications and internet discussions.
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 may favour film SLR cameras, though many higher-end DSLRs are now equipped with weather-resistant bodies. Medium and large-format film cameras are also still preferred by publications insisting on the very highest detail and resolution.
Digital photography was used in astrophotography long before its use by the general public and had almost completely displaced photographic plates by the early 1980s. CCDs are more sensitive to light than plates, and have a much more uniform and predictable response. The CCDs used in astronomy are similar to those used by the general public, but are generally monochrome. Many of those used in infrared astronomy are cooled with liquid nitrogen so as to reduce the image noise caused by heat. Many astronomical instruments have arrays of many CCDs, sometimes totaling almost a billion pixels. Amateur astronomers also commonly use digital cameras, including the use of webcams for speckle imaging or "video astronomy".
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