About 10 years ago, photography was a very expensive hobby. You have to buy the camera, buy film, and for every film, you have to get it developed. You don’t get many pictures out of a roll, which means there is a constant need for purchasing more film. Photo albums were popular gift items for any occasion and were the only photo storage most popularly used.
When I was in high school, one of my hobbies was photography as influenced by my brother Raffy Torres, now a film professional in the US. I first started using an Olympus camera which takes 2 pictures for every shot of a 35mm film. A roll of 36 shots film becomes 72. When I was in 2nd year high school, my father realized my interest in photography, maybe because I was always bugging my brother, he bought me a Yashika FX3 zoom camera which I used until I was in college. I never enjoyed the hobby because film was expensive considering my meager high school allowance I couldn’t afford film much less the cost of developing the film.
Today, my daughter who is in preschool has an interest in photography. Using the digital camera attached to a cellphone, she takes photographs of anything and everything that catches her interest. I never worry of expenses because all we do is download what she took into the computer where she can view the pictures and discard whatever she deems not to her liking. We print one or two which we think deserves printing. The rest stay in the computer’s My Pictures folder.
Today, in the advent of digital cameras, there are a lot more options with regards to photography storage. Photo printing is still expensive but at least now with digital photography, we can select the pictures that we want to print. Digital photography is now very popular. A lot of cellphones are now equipped with digital cameras, anybody, even children, can take pictures anytime. In fact, it is more difficult to find film cameras today than digital. Digital cameras are getting less expensive thus becoming more affordable. There are small ones, large ones, low or high megapixel quality and of different colors.
If you just canvass around, you will find a digital camera out there to suit your taste and your needs.
A friend of mine, Jon Hornbuckle, a British ornithologist and a professional photographer, uses a digital camera to take pictures of wild birds. He takes loads of pictures about a subject and later on selects the best one. His pictures, which he has taken with his digital camera, have been published in several books on wild birds all over the world and in a lot of sites in the internet.
In the registrar’s office of Saint Louis University, Mr. Gilbert Sibayan uses a digital camera to take photographs of students who apply for their transcript of records. The photographs are integrated in their transcript of records when printed. This is very convenient with regards to authentication of TORs since the student’s picture is already in the document. Mr. Sibayan keeps the pictures in the registrar’s database so that the students’ information are highlighted by their photographs.
All major events in the university are covered with photographic and movie documentation by the MIS of Saint Louis University. They use digital still and video cameras to do this. In this case, all events are documented and stored in computers at the MIS so that whenever anybody needs a picture or a video clip of an event they can be requested from Engr. Angel Peralta, the director of MIS.
In the computer applications department of the CICS, the faculty members who teach Comp1, Computer Concepts, integrate photo editing in their instructions. Students get photographed by the instructor with a digital camera or they bring photo files with them, and they edit their pictures. You will be surprised how creative a lot of students are in editing their pictures. Photo and video editing is one of the specialties of Mr. Jonathan Ramirez, Mr. Ronald Ali Mangaliag and Mr. Randy Domantay, faculty members of the Computer Applications Department, and GPC of CICS, respectively. They may be approached for consultation regarding digital photography and editing.
What is the difference between a digital camera and the standard film camera? Let us take into account the film first. In the standard camera, you have to load film into the camera, hoping it won’t get exposed to light. Once the film was inserted, you had to wind it through each picture you took. Then, when the whole roll has been used, you had to take it out to be developed then wait for the pictures to develop. For professional photographers, who have their own dark rooms, the paper and chemicals used to develop films are expensive. When they’re done some of the pictures do not look good and we wish they have never been printed.
In contrast, in digital photography, you are not using film but a memory card that will eventually be read by a computer. Most digital cameras have digital displays known as LCD’s (Liquid Crystal Display). The LCD can show you the picture within seconds of it being taken. If we don’t like how it looks, we can immediately take another shot and another and another.
It is actually more cost effective to use digital photography. The cost of purchasing the film and the cost of developing the film are expensive. With digital photography, the costs are lessened. The camera’s internal memory and a memory card can be used many times over. Once the images are downloaded onto a computer, there is more room for pictures. Memory cards can hold many pictures at once as well depending on the capacity. On top of that, the only expense involves getting pictures printed, purchasing additional memory card and the batteries that are used in the camera. But you may not print your pictures, instead save them in CD’s, flash drives or in the computer hard drive. As for the batteries, purchase a battery charger as well as rechargeable batteries to avoid the high cost of buying disposable ones.
The next time we go for an outing, we do not worry anymore whether there are shops where we could purchase films. Or if our film is enough to cover the event. We can now use digital cameras and all we should worry about is the subject of our photography and whether we will be able to record that rare and memorable moment.
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