Digital photography is the latest development in the long history of photography. Digital cameras are capable of capturing images in a variety of image file types and pixel resolutions. Images taken by the camera are stored either internally or on a memory card and can be downloaded to a computer for viewing or printing to various types of printers. Some companies offer special printers just for printing pictures taken on their cameras. In addition to home printers, many retail stores offer kiosks to upload your pictures. These kiosks offer the ability to view, edit, crop and print pictures in most typical sizes. The home printer docks usually only offer the smaller sizes, such as four by six.

Photography began in 1814 in Paris with a sliding wooden box camera created by Charles and Vincent Chevalier, but the principles of photography date back to the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. It has changed greatly over the years, evolving from the picture that disappeared quickly from the paper it appeared on to digital formats that do not even need to be printed onto paper at all. The devices used to take the photographs have changed considerably as well. The first cameras were sometimes as large as rooms; now cameras come as small as pocket-sized, and are common on most cellular phones.http://library.thinkquest.org/28146/history.htmlhttp://library.thinkquest.org/28146/history.html

Digital cameras have many different features. The image resolution for cameras can range up to 21 megapixels. Cameras also have many different picture types, such as action, landscape and scenery. These picture types affect how the camera processes the image before saving it and how it uses and adjusts to the lighting of the image.

Another feature of the digital cameras is to allow users to change the file type of the image. The more common image types are:http://www.videointerchange.com/formats.htm

• Graphic Interchange Format (.gif)
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpeg)
• Windows Bitmap (.bmp)
• Tag Image File (.tif)
• Portable Network Graphics (.png)
• High Definition (HD)