First a little history, the current most popular form of disposable camera has been around since 1986, when it was first developed by Fujifilm. Prior to this a company called Photo-Pac produced a cardboard camera as early as 1949, which shot 8 exposures and which was mailed-in for processing.
In the last few years we have seen the development of the disposable digital camera. Iin most case the only difference is the image is captured digitally to storage media rather than film.
Popular Science Magazine claims 200 million disposable cameras are sold worldwide and that figure is set to rise to 220 million by the end of the year. I wonder how many of these are purchased by brides to capture memories of their big day?
So let us take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using disposable cameras at your wedding, although I use weddings as an example many of these apply to general use of disposable cameras,
Advantages
They are cheap to purchase.
It is not the end of the world if they are stolen or broken.
Disadvantages
They are based on technology that is at least 20 years old.
By the nature of them being disposable, the components within them are going to be inferior to those in most compact digital cameras, for example, poorer quality lenses and flash.
They do not allow you to view photos as you take them, so you can ensure you get that perfect shot.
They do not allow you to delete photos.
With the film based disposable cameras you have to pay to have the film developed and then if you want to use the output digitally you have to pay to have the pictures developed.
You have to pay to have all the pictures developed, even the ones that are out of focus, or a picture of the back of someone's head.
Once you have finished with them you just throw away the camera adding to the country's landfill.
The quality of picture you obtain from them is never going to be as good as you can obtain with your average compact digital camera.
It seems quite plain that the advantages of disposable cameras are by far outweighed by the disadvantages.
We have been strongly recommending to brides and grooms for some time they do not waste their time or money purchasing disposable cameras for use at their weddings. Not many people these days do not have some form of digital camera, even if it is only on their phone, why not encourage your guest to bring their cameras along to your wedding and use these to take photos.
If you still want to provide a camera for each table hire digital cameras, there are a host of companies out there including our own that will hire good quality compact digital cameras for the weekend to you.
Summary
Although the disposable camera has been part of many wedding celebrations in the past we don not think it will be in the future. A combination of cheaper digital cameras that offer by far superior results and heightened awareness of on-line photo sharing services will finally see the end to the disposable cameras use at weddings and maybe even see it consigned to the same bin as betamax videos and cassette players.
If you still want to get loads of great informal photos taken by your guests at your wedding we recommend you check out the best disposable camera alternative on the net by clicking here
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