SLR Digital Camera

Digital cameras have become quite popular and recently have begun to invade the monopoly film cameras previously held on quality photography equipment. When digital cameras were first invented and made available to consumers, they were praised for their ease of use and the ability to see the new photograph immediately, without having to develop film. However, film was still superior when it came to delivering a high quality image.

The reason for the higher quality of film is that digital cameras record in pixels. Under a magnifier, a digital camera is simply a series of colored squares, while film records what the image actually looks like. The first digital cameras had about 1.2 to 2 megapixels. In terms of resolution, 35mm film is roughly equivalent to 25 megapixels. However, although most digital cameras, even high end ones, only have about half that resolution, the human eye cannot tell the difference, especially at snapshot sizes. The difference only becomes apparent when the pictures are blown up to large sizes.

An SLR digital camera is a worthy investment for an amateur photographer. Anything higher than 5 or 6 megapixels will produce high quality images, and most decent cameras now have 8 to 12 megapixels. SLR stands for Single Lens Reflex, meaning that only one lens is used to gather light for both the viewfinder and for taking the actual picture. What is seen through the viewfinder is exactly the same as what will appear in the photograph. One drawback to early SLR digital cameras was the inability to use the LCD display to frame the picture -- the LCD display could only be used to view the picture once the shot was taken. Newer SLR digitals sometimes include a feature that allows the photographer to use the display to frame the picture, but it is inferior to using the viewfinder.