We explain what digital photography is and what it is for. In addition, its history, main features, advantages and disadvantages.
What is digital photography?
Digital photography is a process of capturing still images through a dark camera , very similar to that involved in traditional photography, but instead of using photosensitive films and developing chemicals, it captures the light using an electronic sensor consisting of units photosensitive.
The images thus captured are also converted into electrical signals and stored in an electronic memory , using the same formats and protocols for communication of digital memories of computers , and the photograph taken using various mechanisms and compression format.
Digital photography, as well as traditional photography, lends itself both to the registration and documentation of historical, family or personal events , as well as to artistic exploration, adding to these senses the possibility of intervening or modifying the image computationally, once taken and stored
It is a revolutionary technological advance that forever changed the photographic industry and allowed the emergence of digital visual arts.
History of digital photography
The first digital camera in history was created by the Kodak industry , a pioneer in the photographic industry, in 1975. Developed by Steve Sasson, it was the size of a bread toaster and a very precarious resolution (0.01 megapixels) , in addition to the process of saving the image digitally was extremely slow: 23 seconds took to save a black and white photograph on a cassette tape, and the same time to recover it once stored.
However, those first attempts opened a huge field of development, which leads in a straight line to modern digital cameras , with enormous resolution capacity, shooting and saving speed, in addition to other modern capabilities such as digital zoom (and not optical ), or even the DSLR system.
What is digital photography for?
Digital photography was the logical step in the photographic industry for accelerated computerization that began in the late twentieth century. The need to be able to transfer the images taken to a computer system without first going through a process of development and subsequent scanning, in which the image could be damaged or distorted, was a great advance in the world of visual management, speeding the times and lowering costs, being able to take many photos in a row and preview them without waiting for development .
Characteristics of digital photography
Digital photography introduced the word “pixel” (from picture element , in English) to photography, being the smallest unit of image that captures a value of gray or color . Thus, the more pixels a camera takes, the larger and more complete the image it captures .
On the other hand, the digital cameras incorporated the digital zoom capability, approaching the image by non-optical magnification, and also the ability to take videos , impossible with a traditional camera. As technology advances, cameras improve in all their aspects and even allow filming in HD values.
Advantages of digital photography
The main advantages of digital photography are:
- Immediacy . The ability to take the photos and dispose of them at once, without having to go to a development process in which the images could also be damaged, is undoubtedly an enormous contribution. The photograph is available a few moments after taking it.
- Cost reduction . By suppressing the photographic rolls and the entire development process, the photographer saves a fortune in material that, in addition, may not be useful once revealed.
- Storage . A digital card can store many photographs more than a roll of 48 photos that were common to use before. In addition, you can modify the compression format of the images or delete the defective ones to maximize storage capacity.
- Technical advantages . The latest digital cameras provide the photographer with real-time technical information about the RGB values of the image, its histogram, its ISO values and many other things that were previously lacking.
Disadvantages of digital photography
The main disadvantages of digital photography are:
- The cost of the cameras . Since they are now small computers, professional cameras are really expensive.
- Electronic noise . Due to the constant electrical flow inside the camera, the images have a margin of “noise” or image damage that is more noticeable when using low ISO values. For many photographers the grain of a 35mm film is much more enjoyable than that of a digital camera.
- Resolution . While an ordinary 35mm film had the equivalent of a resolution of approximately 87 megapixels, which is still unattainable for a digital camera that is commonly around 45 megapixels.