LISTEN to Timothy W & Okami; digital tech fanatics are deluding themselves to believe the hype that digital manufacturers are spreading to the unsuspecting public, as they laugh to the bank with their wheelbarrows full of profits from a cheaper technology & flimsier camera bodies that are over-priced & overrated.
Digital tech is a good technology and it has its advantages (as film also has its advantages), too. But, once I scan my film images, I can do the same things but I get great image detail if I use a good scanner.
The dynamic range is STILL far greater in film than it is with digital with greater image details in highlights and shadows: even the unforgiving slide film has superior dynamic range than digital sensors. Photographers that require great details (professionals like commercial landscape photographers) still use film and some, in fact, use 8” x 10” view cameras!
You need to have several sets of rechargeable batteries plus re-chargers, a card reader, a memory card or two, cables, an auxiliary hard drive to take on the field for temporary storage, a fast computer with loads of memory & a lot of RAM memory, an expensive printer (your images are only as good as your printer), the device to calibrate your computer monitor’s colors to the printer & to your memory card to achieve accurate print color rendition, archival inks and archival paper; get the… er… “picture”? Don’t forget that you must also learn another program to enable you to manipulate, tweak & enhance the images, too (PhotoShop). You can’t possibly compare the body build and durability of a film camera with a digital camera, right? And, digital cameras are outdated every 9 months 18 months… and the cost of paper and inks to print at home is slightly higher than having film developed and the images printed, and the cost of sending the images out is about the same as conventional film (at least where I do business at).
Sure, digital will someday overtake film but not yet.
By the way, I’ve been in photography for slightly over 43 years (court evidence: landlord/tenant court, a few accidents involving fraud; weddings, graduations and portraits since the mid-60s plus a “few” hundred sporting events).
I use only film but I LOVE what digital tech has done: bring down the prices of great quality cameras! The only feature I like about digital technology is the ability to see one’s image seconds after tripping the shutter button.
There are still photos in my family of my great-grandmother when she was still a young girl back in the late 1880s that are still quite clear... I hear of the boasts of digital images but... well, let's just say that there's NO sure way of knowing that yet... but, those images do tend to fade with household aerosols in the air, as well as with humidity and/or excessive heat in the environment; I'm of the opinion that digital tech archival issues are still a bit precarious, to say the least, when they require constant mulitiple backups, don't you think? I still have films of images I took in the 60s (and my family still has photos AND the negatives of images taken in the 30s and 40s, too).
Film still has a few long years to be around; digital tech is just another way of doing the same thing we've been doing for over a hundred years: capturing reflected light as images.
Best wishes.