Other products, due to high cost or limited utility, seem superfluous at first, even dumb, but grow to be indispensable as the technology improves. So it is with digital cameras. But prices are falling and sales are booming as people begin to see the beauty of a tool that expands the bounds of amateur photography even as it enhances convenience. Digital cameras, of course, use no film. The more pixels in a picture, the better the image.
Current cameras are capable of shots of about two megapixels, rivaling the quality of film.
Digital has distinct advantages over old-fashioned photography. Too, desktop computers offer abundant storage space for photo albums. Your toddler will be on the way to college before you've filled one of today's multi-gigabyte hard drives with birthday photos. Most cameras come with photo-processing software that allows you to not only enlarge and crop images but also to adjust color levels, brightness and contrast or even alter the image altogether. Since there's no film canister to accommodate, engineers are free to design devices with distinctive forms.