Digital Camera use and applications

New Technology vs Old Technology

Digital cameras have rapidly over taken the use of film cameras, digital cameras are easy and simple to use, they are cost effective and images taken are easily transferrable to other information storing devices. It is easy to see that digital cameras are the way of the future as they become more and more developed and as they become cheaper and more accessible to the general public. When digital camera's first came out they were just as popular as the film cameras as the quality of the digital photos was not as good as the film. The first digital camera's that were produced had low megapixels and the lenses were not as good as the film cameras. People at first were not convinced that digital cameras were an improvement, i know myself that I wasnt convinced at first. The digital cameras were no match for the range of manual manipulation of photos that film cameras were able to do such as the manual focusing on objects and lighting etc. However as technology has progressed as it always does the lenses and megapixels of the digital cameras have become much better and you are now able to produce photographs that look just as good as film if not better. Now SLR digital camera's are becoming more and more common and they seem to be able to have many of the similar functions if not more functions as the professional film cameras. As technology continually changes we will be forever updating our technology to have the newest model, however new doesn's always prove to be best in terms of what the technological device can do.

There are a variety of ways that digital images can be manipulated. Images can easily be transferred from the camera memory card to a computer. Once they are on the computer they can be transferred to memory sticks, put on the internet, printed and then also be manipulated and changed using photo editing programmes. Photoshop is one of the most common photo editing programmes that allows you to do many creative things with your digital photographs. There are also online photo editing sites aswel.

As cameras are becoming more and more common and the ability to copy and share photos is becoming easier and easier there are many ethical issues that arise. People may upload photos onto the internet without the permission of those who the photograph is taken of. People may also manipulate the photographs and change them as they wish. Now that digital cameras are installed on many cell phones it is becoming easier and easier to capture moments on camera, people may use these digital imaging devices inappropriatly and cause harm to others. We need to take care with cameras and ensure that we use them appropriately so that no one is exploited with the use of these.

In occupational therapy practice, the use of digital cameras is becoming more and more common. In the physical rehabilitation setting occupational therapists have the ability to take photographs of houses that need to be modified to give funders and builders and idea of how they can modify the house. In the mentak health setting digital cameras may be used when clients are participating in activities and occupations and the occupational therapist may take photos of what the clients have achieved.

Flickr.com is a website that allows you to create an account where you can upload photos. It allows you to edit your phtographs using the online photo editing tools, organise your photos and share them with friends online.

Another photo sharing website which offers similar services to Flickr.com is photobucket.com. Photobucket allows you to store, edit, share and upload photos to your facebook profile page and blogger account.

Camera's have a digital and optical zoom. Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera, the lens changes focal length and magnification as it zooms in closer to an image. The image quality stays high throughout the zoom range. Digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size, then enlarges the cropped image to fit the frame again, this results in a significant loss of quality and clarity of the photograph.

A megapixel is a term used for counting the number of pixels in a photograph. A pixel is a contraction of the term Picture Element, pixels are the small components that make up a picture, a regular photograph is composed of millions of tiny squares. A megapixel is 1 million pixels.