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The digital camera revolution has turned the UK into a nation of 'air-brushing' exhibitionists according to new research revealed today. The research, conducted by Lexmark, the printer manufacturer, reveals the huge boom in the number of Brits owning digital cameras is changing our relationship with the camera for good.
The last few years have seen a revolution take place in photography with the price of digital cameras and home photo printers crashing and becoming affordable for all. In fact 15 million Brits now own a digital camera and almost half of these report taking between 50 and 100% more photographs than they took with a traditional film camera. That's an extra 933 million photos per year, but what are these extra photographs being taken of?
When asked 'what is the key benefit of digital photography?', 90% responded that the convenience of being able to see your photos immediately, delete the ones you don't want and email photos to friends was the major advantage. A further 82% said that reducing photo wastage by only printing the ones you want was a major benefit (perhaps unsurprisingly since an area the size of six football pitches could be covered by photos wasted in the UK each year).
However 58% of digital camera users also rated the fact that photos can now be printed on photo quality printers in the privacy of their own homes without being sent away to be developed as a major benefit of digital. With zero wastage, this is proving a big cost saving plus is very easy to do without causing any hassle. In fact they seem to be taking to it with gusto - a third of those questioned admitted to regularly censoring their photographs when showing their friends, and almost a quarter revealed that this censorship was to remove photographs of a 'personal nature'!
Kate Winslet eat your heart out!
The research, commissioned for the launch of Lexmark's new P707 photo printer, also reveals that Brits are getting more technology savvy - 68% of digital camera users are now using photo manipulation software to improve their photos before printing.
This ability to doctor photos before printing them however has led to a boom in Brits giving themselves the celebrity treatment by 'air-brushing' photos of themselves to make them look better. Over a quarter of digital camera users (and almost a third of female digital camera users!) admit to using a PC to make themselves more attractive by doctoring photos to become slimmer, remove spots, whiten teeth, etc.
Even worse, an incredible 3% admit to manipulating photos on a PC to make other people in the photo look worse than them! A further 4% admit to rewriting history by removing people they don't like from photos.
Paul Kreutzer, Director, Consumer Printer Division of Lexmark commented; "We suspected that the digital camera had had a dramatic effect on photography habits - but we couldn't have guessed quite how big the effect would be. As well as making us take many more photos, it seems the digital camera is changing our personalities by turning us into a nation of air-brushing exhibitionists!"
The Lexmark P707 is a high quality, easy-to-use, affordable six colour photo printer which has been developed for digital photographers interested in creating home prints that rival photo lab quality. The P707 features on-board media card readers and the Lexmark Photo Centre, photo editing software, to further simplify the digital photo printing experience.
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