ABSTRACT
Being a photographer requires more than making a decision to use a camera. It involves learning how to make the camera and photographic materials function to fulfill your purposes and learning to see in the way the lens sees. Traditionally, the camera has used a light-sensitive substance on a support base called film to accomplish this task. In the 1980s, cameras that were capable of recording an image electronically, without silver-based film, became available for commercial use. Computers and digital cameras can perform most of the functions of traditional cameras. But because they record images differently than film does, the effect and overall character of the image may differ. Although electronic imaging is a revolutionary breakthrough in imagemaking and is gaining in popularity daily, film continues to be the method and measuring stick that the vast majority of photographers rely on to record their subjects. (Electronic imaging is covered in Chapters 12 and 13).
