Digital Imaing and the pitfalls of a Quick Turnaround.
When I was learning to print my black and white photos in my basement as a kid I dreamed of the convience of color printing at home but knew of the expense. I bought a E-6 kit in high school to do my own slides. Color prints are cheap, if you have the machines and the chemistry. You needed to have a color head for your enlarger, heaters and a thermostat for your chemistry and the time of printing was expediential lengthened.
But with the boon of digital imaging, you can make the images you want and are only limited ... again by your pocketbook.
Whether your price range for your capture device (DIGITAL or TRADITIONAL CAMERA) or your input device (scanner) is high, low or in between, you can get the quality you need (if you have the money). The old adage "You get what you pay for" is the catch phrase for the new millennium. Do not expect a 8x10 print from your ink jet printer of Half Dome you take on your vacation with a 2 or 3 megapixel camera to meet the standards of Ansel Adams.
A lot of the newer cameras are using compression algorithms and marketing buzzwords to build a better camera without changing the properties of physics.