"Professionals often don't know what they're doing," says photographer Daniel Meadows, "they'll just blast off up to 10 frames a second, and later look to see which works."

  Digital cameras don't only eliminate the cost and hassle of film processing, they should help do away with bad holiday snaps and see us all become better photographers.

  The scenario will be familiar to most of us.

  Having retrieved your photos from the chemist, you dart into a damp shop doorway and hurriedly rifle through the prints one by one, hoping to magically rekindle memories of a recent holiday.

  And what do you get instead? A disappointing crop of pictures which bear little resemblance to the mental snap shots you filed away at the time. Exposure problems, poor focussing, bad composition,

  While some professionals still swear by the quality of film over digital, the new format is taking over. As more and more holiday-makers pack a digital camera in their suitcase, disappointing pictures should become a thing of the past.  How do the professionals get that exceptional shot? Sometimes, it's a case of just keeping a finger on the shutter button and seeing what comes out. That's an expensive exercise with film, but the "wipe clean and start again" nature of digital photography means it costs nothing.

  Despite all the work to refine it over the years, there's no getting away from the fact each roll of photographic film is a mini chemistry laboratory. Heat and/or moisture are its enemies, as are the stronger x-ray scanners recently certified in US airports.

  Film can react in odd ways, particularly in low light, making it hard to know how pictures will eventually turn out.

  Digital cameras often give a more faithful reproduction and have a higher tolerance for poor lighting, so there is less need to resort to the harsh built-in flash on compact cameras.

  All but the cheapest digital cameras allow you to compose the shot by looking at an LCD screen, rather than through a conventional viewfinder. This gives a completely flat image - just as the finished picture does, and should aid composition. You also see what is coming through the lens. On a point and shoot there's a parallax - the distance between the viewfinder and lens - which means there's a slight difference between what you see and what the lens sees.

  If all else fails, you can always rely on a little bit of what's known in the trade as "post production". Digital pictures are easily downloaded on to computers and most PCs now come with rudimentary photo-editing software that enables basic adjustments. If you've got the exposure a bit wrong you can adjust it. You can even sharpen something that's out of focus.

  And, with a few deft clicks of the mouse, party snappers can bid a final goodbye red-eye flash syndrome.