When digital photography began to appear on the scene, disciples of the film photography put up many arguments as to why this new phenomena was a “nine day wonder “and couldn’t possibly catch on.

While they grudgingly admitted that digital photography offers more options for creativity, they insisted that it could never be more efficient, faster and cheaper than traditional film photography.

It sounds ridiculous when you consider it today, but only a few short years ago you would spend fortunes on getting films developed. There were even a few people who had their own dark rooms and developed their own films.

However there is no escaping the fact that traditional photography has more or less disappeared from the scene and digital photography has scored a convincing victory. Let is try and examine the reasons that has brought about this dramatic turn about:

1. The overall cost of digital photography is so much less than film photography. For a while traditional film cameras were so much less expensive than digital cameras. Over the years the prices of digital cameras have reduced and their capacity has increased considerably, to match and master the levels of film cameras.

2. With digital photography you can take as many shots as you wish (within reason). Every digital camera contains its own disc. Depending on the size of the disc and the digital size of the image captured, these discs can hold up to 1000 images before they need to be uploaded to the hard disc of your computer.

3. After you have uploaded the images to your computer hard disc, you can browse them at will, and delete the less successful ones. You will not know if your traditional films shots were successful or not, till you take them for development. Also if you were to pay to develop 1,000 film photographs, it would cost you more than it would cost to buy a digital camera. That if you can still find a film developer who is still in business.

4. After you have scanned all your digital images, you can select a few that you would like to print out. Today you can printers for digital development that are high quality and relatively inexpensive, both to buy and cost per print. All in all so much cheaper per print than n traditional film, with the end product being of the best quality.

These are the main reasons why digital photography has become so popular and a hobby for millions who would never have been able to encompass traditional film photography.