Photography for me started with camera and darkroom (more than 20 years ago). In 1985 I got in touch with computers. In the jobs I had in Holland, and in my job in Switzerland computers
always played a role, what resulted in a job as informatics specialist, focussed on Image aquisition and processing.
When I took the step to digital, I realized that it is as creative as the "chemical" way but cleaner and faster. If you shoot RAW
files, it is almost as good as chemical photography. Soon they will be equivalent or even better.
Now what do you do with the pictures, you process them on a computer. How can you maintain the quality over the years? How many and which "Images" do you keep and where do you store them? Backup? Many questions but where is the answer, lets think about it!
I only take RAW pictures. Don't do any consessions to quality, you would regret it later anyway. Bad pictures you erase. RAW files are not that big, honestly. Once a picture is taken I use a RAW converter like THe Experimental RAw Photo Editor (freeware). There are many others good and less good, some free some expensive. Camera's that do RAW have a acceptable RAW converter in the package normally. After creating a output, delete the file and only keep the original RAW file, unless a lot of time would be needed to re-create the same picture. There is already a lot of information on how and what is the best, I won't bother you any longer, Take my advice or not, make nice pictures and enjoy mine.
Sjoerd van Eeden