Comparing Traditional Photography and Digital Imaging

Comparing Traditional Photography and Digital Imaging

The traditional photographic process that has defined image reproduction for over 150 years involves a long drawn out series of chemical reactions beginning with the capture of light on silver film and ending with the fixing of the image onto paper or a transparency through the development processing. The final image is analog, which means it is composed of continuous gradients that are analogous to the gradients seen in the world around us.

Digital imaging, however, requires a completely different process. The image must be captured electronically on a light sensitive silicon chip. Each silicon chip contains thousands of pixels, which is "picture" plus "element", which measure light, color, and contrast. Because each pixel is a square and uniform in dimension, each individual one can be changes by means of a computer. The size of each pixel is determined by the resolution, which is the number of pixels per square inch. The key difference between an image on film and a digital image is the resolution. For example, when you look at a painting, you see many separate pixels that form the whole painting to form a conceptual process. When thousands of pixels are formed together in a digital image, you form one single image that leads you to view the photograph as a single view. In 1995 Kodachrome film had a resolution equivalent to 18 million pixels, the best digital camera had a resolution less than one tenth of this. As this capability continues to grow and improve, however, other means of digitizing photographs have become the medium choice for altering images. If an image is analog to begin with, it must me converted to a digital form, hence turning it into a ...

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...t is now a phenomenon known as digital imagery and it will be with us for the rest of time, and only getting better and harder to detect as time goes on. The speed of improvement on this technology is moving so fast that few can get a hold on it, including the lawmakers to protect the photographers and their subjects. Hopefully for the sake of the humanity, it will gain control and turn us all into believers of the images we see rather than doubters and skeptics.

Bibiliography

1. Brugioni, Dino A. Photo Fakery. Copyright 1999, Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data.

2. Gross, Larry; Katz, John Stewart; Ruby Jay. Image Ethics. Copyright 1988, Oxford University Press.

3. Seward Barry, Ann Marie. Visual Intelligence. Copyright 1998, State University of New York Press, Albany.

4. World Wide Web. www.jupiter.com www.photonews.com