Though they are much more expensive than conventional film cameras, digital cameras have rapidly gained market popularity. And while they do not necessarily outsell in numbers, they are certainly market winners in terms of money. Anyone can find a good reason for succumbing to their charms. First of all, because they don't require film, there are no development costs. Secondly, they have features not found in conventional cameras - for instance, a Webcam mode or the ability to produce short movie sequences. In short, digital cameras strive to combine the quality of a film camera with the immediacy of a Polaroid. 24-hour, or even 1-hour photo development is thus rendered obsolete; photos can first be viewed on the monitor at the back of the camera, then on a computer. Tools like ACDSee are available for creating digital photo albums, where the photos can be viewed as thumbnails, in actual size or in full-screen size, for example.

Portrait Of A Digital Camera

Here's a brief description, for those who have managed to never come across a digital camera in the past few years.

The basic idea behind digital cameras is that they record their images on a memory card instead of film. When the camera is connected to a computer, mostly via USB cable, the photos can be stored to a hard disk. Ergonomically, these digital cameras are similar to the compact versions of their film (analog) counterparts. They often have an optical viewfinder and two LCD monitors. The first LCD is on the top and shows the settings for the current shot. These settings include the image format (JPEG or TIFF, size in pixels and compression level), the battery power level and features such as shutter speed, aperture, etc. The other monitor is for focus and offers many benefits. For one thing, an optical viewfinder is often sensitive to parallax. In other words, its focus is a bit skewed. The TFT monitor at the back of the camera is designed to display the actual image recorded by the sensor, so there should be no surprises with the resulting photo. The quality of the displayed image has also improved greatly in recent times, so you can also tell whether or not the picture will be clear. After focusing, the monitor can also be used for playback. All of the photos stored on the memory card can be previewed on the camera to check exposure, clarity, framing, etc.