Cheap digital cameras
Digital Compact Cameras have revolutionized photography, quickly gaining popularity with consumers. While film cameras use a viewfinder to frame a picture, digital cameras actually project what the lens is seeing onto a digital LCD screen on the back of the camera. This “what you see is what you get” result is so popular with customers that it led to the camera’s nickname, the “Point and Shoot Camera”. This article will explore three of the advantages digital Compact Cameras have over old film cameras: convenience, cost, and picture quality.
Convenience
Digital Compact Cameras store digital images in electronic memory. While all digital cameras have a little built-in memory, users can also insert memory cards (the most popular card formats being SD and MMC) which, depending on the memory card size, can store dozens or even hundreds of high-quality pictures. These memory cards can be removed from the camera and inserted into a PC card reader peripheral to transfer the images to computer. Some newer laptops even have memory cards slots built in. Most digital compact cameras can also be connected to a computer with a common USB cable. Using a digital compact camera and a laptop with wireless internet access, pictures can be taken almost anywhere, put it on a laptop, and uploaded or emailed anywhere in the world within minutes. Compared to film cameras, which take at least an hour to develop, one can see why customers prefer the speed and simplicity of digital compact cameras. Digital images can, of course, be printed out as physical pictures. Specialized printers are available specifically for making color pictures on special photo paper.
Cost
Like film cameras, digital cameras range widely in price. A professional, high-quality Digital SLR Camera can sell for well over £5,000. Compact Cameras, however, are designed for the average family photographer on the average family budget, usually selling for under £180. Canon’s PowerShot Compact Camera series, for example, run from high-end, high-quality versions for £350 to low-end models for a little over £70. Although these prices may be higher than for low-end film cameras, if you consider all the money you’ll save not having to buy film and paying to develop it, this quickly makes up the price difference for digital Compact Cameras.
Picture Quality
Even cheap, low-end digital Compact Cameras come with several electronic enhancements that comparable film cameras don’t. For example, even Canon’s PowerShot A470 (at £75, the least expensive camera with the fewest features in the PowerShot series), automatically sets focus, exposure, and flash levels, has zoom functionality, and motion detectors to reduce movement blur. In fact, these are fairly standard features on any digital Compact Camera. The PowerShot G10, the most expensive and feature-rich model in Canon’s series, does all the A470 can plus (among other things) white balance, automatic contrast correction, optical image stabilization to compensate for jittery hands, and has a larger aperture and sharper lens. It can also be used (as can most high-end digital Compact Cameras) as a video recorder. Video takes up much more memory than still images, and so the videos are limited to a few minutes in length, but this is usually enough for small personal movies when a video camera isn’t available.
Film camera will continue to be used by professional photographers and for specialized uses. For example, there currently is no digital equivalent of the £7 one-use “disposable” film cameras. The average home user just wanting to capture party, holiday, and vacation images, however, a digital Compact Camera is a good investment.