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What is Digital Photography?
Professional grade cameras as well as high quality point-and-shoot cameras existed in the now long gone days of film photography. So what is it about digital photography that makes it different? What and how much remains the same?Composition lighting and exposure calculations remain much the same for both technological worlds. If you knew how to manipulate manual exposure settings on a film camera you already know how to do the same on a digital camera. Exposure settings still remain much the same.
Swapping the old film-world darkroom for digital image processing is the biggest and most important difference between the two worlds. Color film processing was done by remote laboratories. It was expensive. You had to wait for your results and you the photographer had no control. If your film wasn't processed the way you wanted there wasn't much you could to about it.
Post processing with computer software is what makes digital photography what it is. The amateur photographer can make nice-looking images with a cheap digital camera or with a cell phone, but if you want to advance to the professional level you have to shoot raw format images (not jpeg) and you have to do your own digital image processing.
If you don't like the digital results you get from your first post-processing attempts you get to re-develop your digital film. Image processing skills are a bit like skiing. No matter how good you are and how long you've been doing it, you can still get better. And that's half the fun.