Bob Kirk in the UK, it is not true that "with a digital camera you always get a tonal image." My Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 (now superseded by the MVC-CD450) takes regular "tonal images," and it also takes black-and-white only, which Sony calls "text images." To do so only takes the turn of a switch and the camera only records black and white pixels-- no tones in beween. This is great for recording text and with a very low image file. The Sony Mavica records images on a mini-CD (costing about 35 cents each) and I can get several hundred text images on each CD. The camera also records "tonal" greyscale images also, of course.