Digital photography: The art of digital photography

Many of the techniques used in traditional photography also apply to digital photography. The composition of the picture, use of light, line, shape, pattern, etc. also apply to digital photography. Three elements that are different in digital photography are white balance, picture resolution, and digital effects.

White Balance
In a traditional camera, film records and determines the colors of the scene captured in the photograph. As digital cameras have no film to interpret color, they use white balance settings for this purpose. These settings (called Kelvin temperature ratings) are represented by symbols for sun, indoor light, clouds and shade on most digital displays and can be manually selected. The Auto function, however, enables the camera to adjust the settings automatically. For most non-professional needs, this is quite satisfactory.

Some digital cameras contain a histogram function that will also help you adjust your light exposure.

Resolution
Digital cameras record images in pixels. If you expand a picture on your computer with graphic software by zooming in on the picture, you will eventually see the picture rendered as a series of colored dots. The more dots per inch in a picture, the higher the resolution. High-resolution photos have better image quality and bigger file sizes as well.

Many digital cameras on the market allow the user to select the low or high-resolution settings. Since resolution affects file size, more of the photos taken in low resolution can be stored in your camera at a time. High-resolution images may saved in BMP, TIFF, or RAW image formats. These are large file type images. High resolution settings vary with each camera. A low resolution setting on one camera is a high resolution setting on another. It all depends on the camera’s megapixel resolution that could be anywhere in the range of .1 megapixels to 9.1 megapixels.

Resolution is an important consideration when buying your digital camera. If you are only going to be using your images on the web, very high-resolution images will not be as mandatory for you (although high resolution graphics allow more manipulation of the graphic in graphics software programs). Web images are typically lower resolution images since file size is a consideration for the web. If you are going to be printing your images, however, high resolution is necessary for a quality print. To be able to expand an image for an 8x10 print is going to require a high-resolution graphic for a good quality photo.

Digital Effects
Many digital cameras also have built-in effects that can be used to change the presentation of your photos. Fisheye is an example of one such feature that will reshape an image giving it a totally different effect. Soft-focus, Portrait, Scene, Landscape, and Wide-angle are some of the focusing effect capabilities that your digital cameral may have. These are nice features to have fun with. If you have a graphics software program, your images can be further manipulated once you have downloaded your images to your computer.

Source: Starephotography.com

Role of Digital Photography in Event Photography

Event Photography is a well established profession where a photographer will capture images at your event and make them available for sale to anyone who is interested at the event. With the rise of digital technology in photography has made the photography very easy.

Before digital photography an event photographer would take the photos at the start of the event then have to rush off and get the films developed, printed and mounted and rush back to the event before the end of the night to try and pick up any sales from guests who were still there and still interested. But these days with the digital equipment the guests can now have the photos taken and see them almost instantly.

Images can be processed almost instantly at the sale desks by digital capture of the images and automatic transmission of the images to the computer systems via a wireless network. Once the images are at the sales desk they can be viewed by clients, they could then choose to purchase any of the images or have the photos retaken if they weren’t happy with the results. Digital photography allows the photographer to shoot multiple images and get an image that’s going to please the whole group or at least a large portion of them.

Digital photography has also played a part in the output of the final prints. Modern Dye-Sub printers are portable, easy to use and capable of producing “Real” photos that are durable, won’t fade and of a high quality.

Digital Photography really has changed the face of event photography.