Cameras are used to capture photos. Traditional cameras capture photos on film. The film is developed and the photos are printed. The negative, i.e. the original developed film, provides a source from which new prints can be obtained. The advent of high-quality scanning also allows a print to act as a source of copies, although not with the same quality as from a negative. If either a negative or a print is damaged, the quality of a subsequent copy is compromised.
Digital cameras capture photos as digital images which can be both displayed and printed. A digital image thus acts as a digital “negative”. However, many users find the task of printing and otherwise managing digital images onerous.