(94) {{U}}Digital photography is still new enough that most of us have yet to form an opinion about it, much less develop a point of view.{{/U}} But this hasn't stopped many film and computer buffs from agreeing on the early conventional wisdom about digital cameras--they're neat peripherals for your PC, but they're not suitable for everyday picture-taking.
The buffs are wrong: the smart money is on digital cameras--or soon will be. (95) {{U}}The latest digital cameras cost hundreds, not thousands, of dollars and they more closely emulate the picture quality we've come to expect from film cameras.{{/U}} But more than anything else, digital cameras are radically redefining what photography means and what it can be.
Film and prints are not going away any time soon. (96) {{U}}But even with improvements the venerable medium of photography as we know it is beginning to seem out of step with the way we live.{{/U}} In our computer and camcorder culture, saving pictures as digital files and watching them on TV is for millions of Americans no less practical--and in many ways a lot more appealing--than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be developed.
Paper is also terribly unforgiving. (97) {{U}}Pictures that are incorrectly framed, focused, or lighted are nonetheless committed to film and ultimately processed into prints.{{/U}}
The digital medium changes the rules. Still images that are captured digitally (with light sensitive semiconductors known as a charge-coupled devices, or CCDs) can immediately be shown on a computer monitor, a TV screen, or a small liquid-crystal display (LCD) built right into the camera. (98) {{U}}And since the points of light that constitute an image are saved as a series of digital bits in electronic memory, rather than being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted online.{{/U}}