Difference Between Photography and Digital Photography

Photography vs Digital Photography

The word “photography” is derived from the Greek words phōs which means light, and gráphein which means writing, hence, photography means writing or painting with light. In the modern day, photography is the art of taking photos using cameras. There are many variations of cameras. Cameras can be classified based upon the sensors used, the lenses used, professional, semi-professional or entry level, the camera framework and many more categories. Most of these classifications are based on technologies used in these cameras and the performance of them. It is vital to know these classifications and the difference it makes in order to excel in the field of photography. This article will try to give an understanding of what is photography, what is digital photography, what are the cons and pros of these things, what are the similarities between these two and finally the difference between photography and digital photography.

Photography

The main element or tool used in photography is the camera. A camera consists of a lens, a sensor and a body. These are just the basic requirements. There are many other features apart from these. Before the invention of the digital camera, the cameras used a light sensitive film as the sensor. The chemical layer on the surface of the film gets reacted upon incident light rays strike it. The image is recorded as the reacted amount of the chemical components. Film based cameras had several drawbacks. The films were not reusable. The amount of film reels to be taken out in a single outing had to be significantly large in order to get enough photographs. The final product cannot be seen until the film was developed. A single reel had a single ISO sensitivity value. Therefore, it was not easily adaptable for different lighting conditions. On the brighter side, the film based camera was cheaper, and the photographer had to adjust exact setting, which made him a more experienced photographer.

Digital Photography

Digital photography is based on the same technology as the film based camera. But instead of the film, the digital camera uses an optical sensor to capture the image. These sensors are made of CCD sensors (charged coupled devices) or CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensors. There are some heavy improvements and advantages of the digital camera than the film based camera. The sensor can produce virtually unlimited amount of photographs without replacement. This reduced the usage cost. Also, technologies such as autofocus came in to action with digital cameras. The amount of photographs that can be taken depends only on the storage of the memory card. On the down side, the digital camera costs more than the film based camera and the maintenance costs are extremely higher than the film camera.