A digital camera functions exactly as a traditional film camera, except that rather than store images on a roll of film it stores them in its digital memory.

With film cameras you couldn't look at the film itself, but had to get it developed, whereas with a digital camera you can view the image instantly. All except the cheapest digital cameras available have a viewer built into the body of the camera which will allow you to view on a small screen the images stored in the memory of the camera.

One immediate advantage of this - apart from the time saved - is that if you don't like an image you can simply remove it, rather than paying to have it developed before you can judge whether you like it.

When you take pictures with a digital camera you can transfer the images from your camera to a computer where they are stored as electronic files.

Once you have the image as a file on your computer it allows you with the appropriate software to edit it, so you can crop the image, remove red-eye or change the lightness of the image.

Similarly because it now exists as a file you can attach your image to an e-mail and send it to friends in the blink of an eye, or display it on a webpage on the internet. If you would still prefer to have a set of photos to show you can take your memory card to the chemists to develop and they can make a series of photographic prints.

The flexibility of digital photography means that it is increasingly becoming a more popular medium that traditional film photography.
Because it doesn't rely on using film it also means that you can usually take far more pictures with your camera. How many pictures depends on how much memory that you have available. The more detailed the image that you take the more memory it takes up.
Most cameras have a small amount of built-in memory which will allow you to store a limited number of images. However to increase the available memory you can use small detachable memory cards which are fitted into the camera and which record the images that you take.

If you take a picture at a high resolution it will use more memory. This is because the image is composed of more dots or pixels and therefore contains far more detail. The more pixels in an image the higher its resolution and the more memory it will occupy.
If I want to blow up an image (for example to make a poster) then I would want the image to be at a high resolution. This is because otherwise it won't retain sufficient detail; its edges will appear coarse and less true to life. If I am only taking a picture to be used as a small image on a computer screen, however I can use a much lower resolution because the scale of the reproduction is smaller and needn't retain as much detail. Most cameras will allow you to change the resolution of the picture that you want to take so you can choose according to how you want to use the image.

Many cameras will also allow you to choose the type of file format you want to use to store your images. TIFF images are less compressed than JPEG images so retain more quality, but as a result also take up much more room. If you want to store more images it is best to use a JPEG setting in order to maximise the amount of memory being used.

Similarly if you want to e-mail an image it is best to use a JPEG image as otherwise the size of the e-mail message can become too large and take much longer to open on a slow internet connection.

If you store your images as TIFF files they retain much more detail, but if you want to send them by e-mail you can always convert them to a more compressed JPEG file on your computer before sending them.

Transferring photos to the computer

In order to transfer photos to your computer you will need to connect the camera to the computer using the lead supplied with the camera (tethering).

Most digital cameras now use a USB connection to transfer data between the two. USB is a plug-and-play technology. This means that once the camera has been connected to the computer it automatically detects the device and if the appropriate software is installed will launch the program to download the images.

Once you have downloaded the images you can name the files and save them to your computer.