Digital cameras

Digital cameras have completely changed the way that we take pictures. The change has happened in a remarkably short time and has almost completely eliminated the use of film. It is ironic that most of the development of digital cameras was done by Kodak who were the ones to suffer the most from their use as there was no longer any demand for film.

Digital cameras are based on technology that was first used in the television industry to record television images onto video tape. The system worked by using electrical impulses to record images on a digital tape. This technology quickly came into widespread use for recording television shows. The use of the technology for taking still pictures was largely pioneered by NASA. There long distance space probes needed a way to take pictures that could be transmitted back to earth. Digital cameras worked well for this so they worked to develop the technology to allow this to happen. Much of this work was done in conjunction with Kodak.

It was Kodak who developed the first commercial digital cameras. They started working on them heavily the seventies but they would not actually produce a product until the late eighties. The issue that caused them so much trouble was getting the resolution high enough to match that of film. The first cameras that they produced were intended for use by professional photographers and they were very expensive. The pictures had to be produced on photographic paper which required that the pictures be developed in much the same way that they were for film cameras.

In the mid nineties digital cameras started to appear on the market that were intended for consumers. While the price remained high these cameras were designed to produce pictures that could be displayed on your computer. The connection between the camera and the computer was made by wires. Even then in order to print the pictures it was necessary to get this done professionally. This would change in the late nineties when the first printers capable of producing photo quality images started appear.

Over the last decade or so digital cameras have gone through an enormous evolution, getting both much smaller and much cheaper. More importantly the resolution of the cameras has been dramatically improved. This in large part has killed off the use of film in cameras. One area where huge improvements have been made is in the use of memory cards that can store pictures. It is now possible to store thousands of pictures on your camera. The improvements in digital cameras just keep coming as the makers look to find new reasons to get you to buy a new camera. In reality we are starting to get to the point where the value of the improvement are of fairly limited value. You should have no problem with using the same digital camera for several years.