Camera Buying Tips - Digital Versus Analog

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In my experience as a photographer I came across countless of cameras, both digital and analog. This article is meant to explain the differences between the two technologies and serve as a camera buying guide for the undecided shopper.

Digital and old 35mm film cameras look and are operated almost the same: you look through the viewfinder, frame your shot and push the shutter button. However, the great difference between them lies in the way they capture and process the image. While the 35mm predecessors used the film to capture the image, their digital successors use a charge-couple device (CCD) known as the image sensor. This silicon chip, not larger than a letter key on the keyboard you have in front of your now, contains several grids of photosensitive diodes called pixels and each one of these will store exactly the information contained in one pixel from the picture that will be rendered so nicely on your desktop.

So, when the shutter opens to take the shot, each pixel will memorize the intensity of the light that fell on it. Milliseconds later, after the shutter closes, this value is converted to a digital number, and the sequence of the several millions of numbers representing the pixels in the picture is compressed, then stored in the memory of the camera (be that internal or the memory card). When switching the camera in playback mode, this sequence is decompressed, and every single digital value is translated into a pixel on the LCD screen. So, in fractions of a second a lot of calculations are made, and this happens with every photo we take or replay.

There are two separate devices / media involved in the process: the image sensor, that captures and digitizes the image, and the storage device, similar in functionalities with the hard disk drive on your computer. With traditional 35mm cameras, the film is used both to record and store the image.

The technology behind digital cameras allows users to view the images on the built-in LCD screen (or TV set, if the camera has such an extension). Also, once captured, digital photos are already in a format we are all familiar with: you can insert them in Word documents, send them to your friends over your favorite instant messaging client, upload on Facebook, burn on DVD's or simply store them on your hard drive for later usage. This is not the case with the old 35mm-ers, where you had to drive downtown to have the pictures developed, then use a scanner to get a digital version.

To wrap it up, if you are to choose between buying a digital camera and an old film one, there are lots of reasons why you should go for the latest technology.