Digital Photography imaging uses an electronic sensor such as a charge-coupled device to record the image as a piece of electronic data rather than as chemical changes on film.

Traditional photography was a considerable burden for photographers working at remote locations (such as press correspondents) without access to processing facilities. With increased competition from television there was pressure to deliver their images to newspapers with greater speed.

Photo-journalists at remote locations would carry a miniature photo lab with them and some means of transmitting their images down the telephone line. In 1981 Sony unveiled the first consumer camera to use a CCD for imaging, and which required no film -- the Sony Mavica.

While the Mavica did save images to disk, the images themselves were displayed on television, and therefore the camera could not be considered fully digital. In 1990, Kodak unveiled the DCS 100, the first commercially available digital camera. Its cost precluded any use other than photojournalism and professional applications, but commercial digital photography was born.

Digital imaging uses an electronic sensor such as a charge-coupled device to record the image as a piece of electronic data rather than as chemical changes on film. Some other devices, such as cell phones, now include digital imaging features. Even though there are no chemical processes, a digital camera captures a frame of whatever it happens to be pointed at, which can be viewed later.

Although at first glance digital imaging appears to be photography, and even meets some of the criteria to be defined as such, it is fundamentally different. The primary difference lies in that photography inherently resists manipulation due to the fact that it is an analog process involving film, optics and photographic paper, while digital imaging is a highly manipulative medium since it is purely digital from the beginning.

This difference allows for a degree of image post-processing which is impossible in photography, and thus the distinction has less to do with visual dissimilarities, and far more to do with their quite different communicative potentials and applications.

Digital imaging is replacing photography in the consumer and professional markets at a rapid pace. In 10 years, digital point and shoot cameras have become widespread consumer products. These digital cameras now outsell film cameras, and many include features not found in film cameras such as the ability to shoot video and record audio.

Kodak announced in January 2004 that it would no longer produce reloadable 35 mm cameras after the end of that year. This was interpreted as a sign of the end of film photography. However, Kodak was at that time a minor player on the reloadable film cameras market. In January 2006 Nikon followed suit and announced that they will stop the production of all but two models of their film cameras, they will continue to produce the low-end Nikon FM10, and the high-end Nikon F6.

On May 25, 2006 Canon announced they will stop developing new film SLR cameras.[2] The price of 35 mm and APS compact cameras have dropped, probably due to direct competition from digital and the resulting growth of the offer of second-hand film cameras.

Because photography is popularly synonymous with truth ("The camera doesn't lie"), digital imaging has raised many ethical concerns. Many photojournalists have declared they will not crop their pictures, or are forbidden from combining elements of multiple photos to make "illustrations," passing them as real photographs.

Many courts will not accept digital images as evidence because of their inherently manipulative nature. Today's technology has made picture editing relatively easy for even the novice photographer. Even beginners can easily edit color, contrast, exposure and sharpness with the click of a mouse, whereas those same procedures would have taken an extensive amount of time in a traditional darkroom.