Tutorial two! digital cameras :)

A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature”.

Briefly discuss this statement in relation to digital camera technology. What would you consider to be some of the pluses and minuses digital camera technology holds in relation to more traditional film based cameras?

Digital cameras..a handy way to take pictures..or a waste of handbag space?

It is true that digital cameras on the whole do not compare to old film cameras in the realm of picture quality, hence the recent trend of going back to tried and trusted film. however, digital are packing a variety of functions to compensate such as video recording.

pluses of digital cameras
-you can take hundreds of photos,
-pick and choose the photos you want to develop
-video/sound recording
-easy storage of photos on computers
-easy to share
-always ready to 'point and shoot'
-easy manipulation of images

negatives of digital cameras
-poor picture quality
-less control over the picture..privacy issues?
-

List some of the ways that digital images can be stored transferred and manipulated using other communications technology.


Digital cameras make it so easy for images to be stored, transferred and manipulated. Images are easily stored on computer hard drives, USBs, CD/DVDs, external hard drives.
Transferring these digital images is incredibly easy, they are usually transferred via USBs, CD/DVDs and external hard drives.
Manipulation of digital images is also very easy, most computers come with photo editing software, there are also hundreds of different programmes that can be purchased in electronic stores as well as online, in addition to basic free online programmes.

Given the prevalence of image capturing devices, and thinking about the issues discussed in tutorial one, consider what sort of ethical issues may arise with their use.

The prevelance of digital cameras and other capturing devices give rise to many issues. In a regular day people may be captured by many devices such as CCTV cameras, personal digital cameras, cellphone cameras, ipod cameras, webcams.



Digital images are increasingly involved in occupational therapy practice for example in communication books, exercise charts etc

Flickr.com
Fickr is a photo sharing website which aims to "help people make their content available to the people who matter to them" and "enable new ways of organizing photos and video"

Another website that offers similar services to Flickr is photobucket.com

Digital cameras generally offer two types of zoom, digital and optical. It is important to understand the differences between these two as they are very different. With optical zoom, the lens does the equivalent of moving you closer to the subject of your photo. The quality of the picture is the same before and after you use optical zoom. However when it comes to using digital zoom the picture quality is decreased. This is because the camera is using the same photo and simply magnifying and cropping it. So its not really "zoom"ing in at all!
If you want a more detailed description go to
http://www.photoxels.com/digital-photography-tutorials/optical-digital-zoom/

Now, to make digital cameras a tad less confusing I'm going to tell you what a megapixel is!
A megapixel is one million pixels.
Yes..but what is a pixel i hear you ask? well a pixel is what digital pictures are made up of, they are tiny little dots of colour which all sit together to create one smooth picture. Pixels are also found in tv and computer screens. When it comes to digital photography, the more pixels a camera has the more smooth the picture will be and any enlargements will look better. To find out more about pixels go to http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-megapixel.htm