You can expect significant cost reductions in digital cameras over the next
year or so. The currently used CCD image sensors are fairly expensive to
manufacture, and can be built by only a few fabs around the world and are
relatively difficult (i.e. expensive) to interface. But CMOS image sensors
are about to the level of quality required for low-end digital cameras
already, and they're so dirt cheap to build that all the cell phone
manufacturers are trying to figure out what to do with cameras built into
cell phones just because it is so close to being free. I work for an
industrial research consortium that among other things tracks this kind of
stuff pretty closely, and we're expecting to see quite a lot of price drop
in digital imaging in the real near future. Of course, as others have
pointed out, storage cost (16mb flashcards, etc.) can be significant, and
that will probably change less rapidly. Personally, I'm going to hold off
for a little longer before buying anything - meanwhile I'll just continue to
scan conventional photos.
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