However, along with the excitement has come many questions about the creative and technical possibilities of these new tools. This report attempts to address some of these questions and shed light on some of the confusion. The word digital as it pertains to photography encompasses a wide spectrum of tools and tasks. Digital cameras can be used in place of film-based cameras to create images. While currently very expensive on the high-end side, their ability to capture a wider spectrum of light values does and will continue to allow the artist to capture more of what the eye sees than does film.
Film only captures a relatively narrow spectrum of light values.
It should be noted that the cost of digital cameras continues to drop, and the quality continues to rise. It is becoming increasingly economically realistic to create very high quality photographic images without using film at all. Once a film or digital image is captured with the camera, it can then enter another digital realm, often referred to as the digital darkroom. Taking the place of the chemical darkroom, the image is transferred into a computer. From film this would be accomplished by scanning the image and recording it onto a CD, Zip drive or other data storage media, then opening the image file in the computer.