Other Advantages of Digital Photography
The electronic nature of digital photography has a number of other advantages that make photography easier to learn and reduce costs. These two things make people more comfortable with their cameras and more willing to use them and try out new techniques.
Immediate Feedback
Perhaps the most frustrating part of film photography was not knowing if your pictures came out. It might be hours or days before you knew, and by then the event you photographed was long over. The priceless pictures of your child's birthday party or your daughter's wedding could be too dark or blurry, for example, and you would not know until it was too late.
While not perfect, the LCD (liquid-crystal display) monitor solves many picture problems and allows accurate previews of many lighting situations in real time. However, flash, focus (depth of field), and camera movement that causes blurry pictures can only be judged immediately after a picture has been taken when the LCD monitor is in review mode.
Again, this has all changed with digital photography. The immediate feedback of the LCD monitor on the back of a digital camera both gives you a good preview of what your pictures will look like before you take them and lets you review pictures after they are taken. This ability has removed most of the uncertainty of photography and has also made it much easier to learn new skills, since the LCD shows the amateur photographer the results of her efforts.
Digital Photography Costs Much Less
As experienced photographers know, the more pictures you take, the better your chances of getting that really dramatic shot. With film, however, the cost was prohibitive — about ten to fifteen dollars a roll with small prints.
However, with a digital camera, once you have bought a memory card you can shoot hundreds of pictures, download them to your computer, erase the memory card, and begin to fill it up again with new pictures. The only cost, after the initial expense for the memory card, is the cost of the space on your hard drive, which is practically nothing. Furthermore, the cost of cameras and memory cards keeps dropping.
Also, you will probably be more willing to try new techniques, new lighting, and new angles with your digital camera because mistakes won't cost you anything and can be erased. And since you can view images blown up to any size on your computer, you do not have to go to the expense of having all your pictures made into prints.
