The cost never enters into your thinking. The real-time visual image which shows you almost exactly what you are getting, is a photographer's dream. You see the picture in color on an LCD screen before you take it and also immediately after you take it. You can shoot for ten minutes, review what you just shot, then shoot for another ten minutes. This immediate feedback makes the digital camera a different kind of beast.
Immediate feedback makes the digital camera a different kind of beast.
Also you can turn the lens around 180 degrees so that you can take self -portraits and see accurately what you will get at the same time. Again this was impossible before. Just put these pictures directly on the Internet which is the greatest gallery imaginable for a photographer. For computer literate people, the digital camera is much less expensive, more spontaneous, easier to work with and easier to exhibit. I feel that the deepest promise of still photography is a captured image of pulsing life still beating.