We all know that digital cameras, unlike conventional ones, allow you to shoot photos and store them in a digital memory for printing later or simply archiving on your computer, but as a society, how has the digital camera changed us?
• The “I was there” effect
According to the BBC, people’s public behavior has changed thanks to digital cameras. Today, everyone documents their activities with digital photographs. For example, if we go to a restaurant and are served a spectacular dish, we snap a photo with our phone camera and post it on Instagram or Facebook. Or go to any concert or a football match, and the stadium lights up with a million digital camera flashes.
• We’re taking more photos than ever before
This has been the main impact of digital technology. If you were a kid growing up in the 80's, your dad maybe used a 24 exposure roll of film to mark the occasion, which would have been looked at as a pretty generous investment in your memories. Today with digital cameras, there is no cost for photos so we feel free to take as many, as often as we like.
• We’re taking better photos
Statistics show that the more pictures you take, the more likely you'll get great shots. For example, if you need to get 5 excellent photos of an event and take about 300 photos instead of 24, most likely you will get some fantastic images.
• Citizen journalism
Digital cameras allow us to capture unprecedented events as they happen and man-on-the-street digital camera footage is often used by mainstream media as well as going viral on the internet.
• We have all become archivists
With our social networking profiles, it’s extremely easy to share the 500 photos we took during our last vacation. If the current trend in posting photos continues, in 20 years the average profile will have 50,000 photos.
For many the digital camera and social networks have become the way we manage our own memory.
Jorge Chavez is Senior Editor at Mijo! Brands of Mexico.
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