You can compose and review digital pictures on the camera's LCD screen.
If you dread taking rolls of film to the photo lab, with hopes of having just a few good frames turn out, make the leap to digital photography. Using its handy features like a preview LCD screen and on-screen crop guides, you'll rarely crop off someone's head in a photo again. Digital technology has removed the much of the guesswork from picture-taking, making what you do with this hobby more predictable, and guaranteeing photos even inexperienced photographers will be proud of.
Controlling Color
Digital cameras offer control over image color. Pictures captured on film that is balanced for daylight -- the most common type of film on store shelves -- take on an unnatural color cast when you're shooting indoors near an incandescent bulb, or under fluorescent lighting. If you're tired of yellow-green gymnasium pictures and orange-hued rooms, digital cameras offer a white-balance function to compensate for color casts created by lighting sources. When you choose between settings such as "Florescent", "Daylight", "Cloudy" or "Incandescent," the camera will adjust the exposure for that type of light, giving the picture a more accurate representation of the scene than daylight-balanced film.
Getting Organized
If you're prone to stockpiling rolls of exposed film, forgetting to pick up orders at the photo lab, or you never seem to have enough film on hand, digital photography can get you organized. Once you snap a digital photo, it's processed and ready to view on the camera's LCD screen within less than a second. The cost of processing rolls of film into negatives vanishes, and if you upload your digital images to an online photo processor with a mail-order service, you only need to travel to your mailbox to have prints in-hand. If you're an avid shooter who fills up a roll of 24- or 36-exposure film quickly, delight in the fact that standard digital media cards hold hundreds of pictures.
Gratification and Cost Benefits
Since digital cameras process photos internally, pictures become visible just after pressing the shutter button. You no longer need to wait to find out if your pictures turned out the way you wanted. If someone blinked or your finger obscured the cameras lens, you will know and can easily retake the photo. Snap away until you get a frame you like. Later you can delete the poor photos and only pay to print the good images. Unlike when you process a roll of film, digital photography allows you to pick and choose which pictures to print.
Learning Tool
If you're taking your photography hobby to the next level and choose a camera loaded with manual features, a digital camera becomes an immediate learning tool. For example, if you're experimenting with aperture settings on a camera, you can take several pictures in a row, each with a different aperture. Then review the images on the camera's LCD screen to see which setting you like best for the effect you're trying to achieve. Since you see your exposure shortly after taking the picture, you can make adjustments to the camera settings and re-shoot while you're still in the moment. With film, you need to develop or take the roll to the photo lab, wait a minimum of an hour for processing, and then travel back to the photo location to reshoot as necessary.
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