Digital Cameras

Digital cameras have virtually taken over from the old film based cameras now. Although there are many advantages to using the newer technology, there are also some disadvantages.
Digital cameras are easy to use, and a great feature of them is that you can preview the images immediately after taking them. This is great in contrast to the use of film cameras when you have to wait until you have printed a film of photos before getting a look at them. With this feature on a digital camera you can pick and choose between what photos you would like to print, or even just store them on the computer. With film cameras, you must print all photos taken which means you might end up with quite a few bloopers!

The disadvantage about storing digital photos on the computer only means that you run the risk of loosing them. If the computer crashes, all those images can be lost within seconds. Even creating back ups of the photos can be risky, it seems that discs only last for up to 15 years and after that quality can deteriorate considerably. This also takes away from the traditional form of storing photos in an album. This is a shame as photo albums generally hold a lot of sentimental value and can be great fun to look at. Digital cameras also compromise on quality compared to that of a film camera.

Photos can be stored, manipulated and transferred using many different technologies. They can be stored on a camera, computer, cell phone, ipod, flash drives and discs among other things. They can be transferred using computers, email, pxt messages, fax machines and the more traditional way of printing them and posting them in the mail. Digital images can also be published onto the internet using social networking websites such as facebook. There are specific websites such as Flicker and Snapfish which are used specifically for the sharing, manipulating and storing of photos. There are also specific programs which are used to manipulate photos such as Photoshop.

Thinking about how easy it is to post photos on the internet, many ethical issues also arise. Photos that people do not wish to be shared can easily be put on the net for anyone and everyone to view. Once they have been put on the internet, although they can be removed, it is likely that people will have already viewed them. OTs may use photography to capture images of clients doing specific tasks and use these as evidence. Due to confidentiality issues it is important these photos are stored correctly in a manner that other people cannot view them and identify the person.
If a photo is to be put on the internet, the person who posts it should have permission from the people in the photo. By photoshopping a photo, it can be manipulated to look different to the initial image. This can create images that are untrue and also causes many ethical issues.

OT's also use photos to share information with other OT's around the world. With the permission of the person who has been photographed, photos can be put on websites in order to illustrate what OT's might do with clients. http://www.nzaot.com/ is a website which uses photos to illustrate what OT's do.

Flicker
Flicker is a website used to upload, store, edit, crop and share images. It allows you to manage who can view the photos you upload and can be used to make things using your images, such as photobooks and DVDs. www.snapfish.co.nz is a similar website used to store and manipulate photos.

Most cameras have both optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. This results in high quality images.
Digital zoom is when the camera does not have an extendable zoom lens. It simply crops the image to a smaller size, then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again. This results in a loss of quality, the zoomed image may become pixalated and blurry. Digital zoom can also be done on a computer.

A megapixel (MP) is 1 million pixels (which is the smallest piece of information in an image). The more megapixels a camera uses, the better quality the images will be, especially when they are enlarged. So a 3MP camera will take better photos than a 1MP photo