Digital photography, as opposed to film photography, uses an electronic sensor to record the image as binary data. This facilitates storage and editing of the images on personal computers. Digital cameras now outsell film cameras and include features not found in film cameras such as the ability to shoot video and record audio.
Some other devices, such as mobile phones, now include digital photography features.Applications and considerations With the acceptable image quality and the other advantages of digital photography (particularly the time pressures, of vital importance to daily newspapers) an increasing number of professional news photographers have begun capturing their images with digital cameras.
Digital photography has also been adopted by many amateur snapshot photographers, who take advantage of the convenience of the form when sending images by email or placing them on the World Wide Web. Digital cameras have also been integrated into many cell phones, although, because of the small lens, the quality of these pictures makes 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 of a given price is still inferior to that available from a film camera, and the quality of images taken on medium format film is near-impossible to match at any price with a digital camera. Some have expressed a concern that changing computer technology may make digital photographs inaccessible in the future while printed images have a very long lifespan. A related concern in a specialized application is the use of digital photographs in court proceedings, with the perceived difficulty of demonstrating an image's authenticity.
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 (much higher amounts of) funds for supplies and developing. Some commercial photographers have also begun moving to digital technology because of the tremendous editing capabilities now offered on computers. The photographer is able to color-balance and manipulate the image in ways that traditional darkroom science cannot offer. With fully color-balanced systems from the camera to the monitor to the printer, the photographer can now print what is actually seen on the screen.
However, digital cameras require batteries that need to be recharged frequently, and this means that a photographer needs access to electrical outlets. For this reason, photographers who work in remote areas, such as those who work for National Geographic overwhelmingly favor film SLR cameras.Digital photography was used in astronomy long before its use by the general public and had almost completely displaced photographic plates by the early 1980s. Not only are CCDs more sensitive to light than plates, but have much more uniform and predictable response, and the information can be downloaded onto a computer for data analysis. The CCDs used in astronomy are similar to those used by the general public, but are generally monochrome and cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures so as to reduce the noise which is caused by heat. Many astronomical instruments have arrays of many CCDs, sometimes totalling almost a billion pixels. Nowadays amateur astronomers also commonly use digital cameras, including the use of webcams for speckle imaging or "video astronomy".
