Nov 14 2010

The Digital Photography Revolution

Posted by xpdigita in Related topics

Although you may have never thought about it, digital photography has had an incredible impact on all of our personal lives. Shooting, protecting and sharing our special memories has never been easier than with digital photography. However, the benefits of digital photos doesn’t end with great vacation photos. Digital technology has done more than just improve our ability to share and store pictures -it’s had a massive impact on how many modern industries operate.

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Text area: Olympus E300

Here are five industries revolutionized by digital photography and its technology:

Medicine

The field of medicine has benefited greatly from the development of digital imagery. Thanks to the ease of transferring digital images, patient data can now be stored with relevant photographs and sent to any hospital in the world. By not having film, results for equipment like x-rays are faster and things like reference photographs can now be stored on a hard drive instead of taking up physical space in some storage room. Many endoscopic procedures available today would not be possible without the technology of digital.

Cyber-Space

Over the last ten years, the Internet has experienced a social revolution. What was once thought of as a place for nerds to gather in chat rooms has now become one of the most important communication tools in the world. A large element of this communication is the uploading, sharing, and downloading of photographs. Facebook alone has over 10 billion photographs and counting, none of which would be present if not for digital cameras. Whether it’s sharing images of a wedding (so others can display them in picture frames) or cell-phone photos of a crisis, digital has changed the way in which people share their stories on the web.

Outer Space

Without question, space exploration is one of humanity’s most powerful achievements. New technology has let scientists see things in space that had never been viewed before like the digital cameras mounted on the Mars Exploration Rovers that have helped us learn more about the Planet Mars. Without the ability to process images as data and transmit that data across unimaginable distances, our view of space would still largely be limited to what we can see from Earth.

Sports Photography

While it may seem obvious that the development of digital has changed the way in which we document sporting events, it’s hard to understand how great a difference it has created without looking in more detail. Since digital photography is not limited by film, there is really no cost difference between taking a thousand photographs or taking one. With this added freedom, sports journalists are free to take thousands of photographs at every event they cover, increasing their chances of scoring one of those “one in a million” shots and opening the profession up to those who may have been afraid to risk the film.

Education

And with education, digital photography has helped make learning more accessible, more interactive and perhaps even more rewarding. The low cost of taking digital pictures makes it great for student projects as well as giving students countless resources for research projects and presentations. This causes pictures to become a bigger part of people’s lives and allows more people to have and display them wherever they want whether in small picture frames or in their wallets. Digital video, which relies on many of the same technologies as digital photos, has improved our ability to take courses from home and has helped to erase national borders by allowing students to interact with people across the globe in real-time.

It can be easy to take digital photography for granted, especially in our daily lives. However, when you take a look at some of the things that digital cameras have made possible, it is hard to ignore the impact that they have had on our quality of life. From advanced medical procedures to a clearer view of the stars, digital has opened many doors that without it would have remained closed – possibly forever.

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