Appreciation Week: Digital Cameras

When a technology changes, it's easy to forget how things were before it changed.


Before the digital camera, I rarely took photos, leaving it to Daughter Number Three-Point-One's father. We would get them developed, put the best ones into an album, and then store the envelopes with the negatives and extra prints in a box somewhere.

Because film cost money to develop, photos automatically were subject to a scarcity mentality. You wouldn't take a photo of just anything, and if you did, you would end up with boxes full of hard-to-manage negatives and prints.

As we all know, managing digital pictures has its problems as well, but taking up space isn't one of them. As long as I have a camera with me -- whether a point-and-shoot like this or just my phone -- I can usually manage to make a visual record of whatever catches my attention, and if I keep on top of labeling the images as I download them to my computer, I can find them later, too.

And all with no expense and no space taken up.