Is there value in slowing down? Yes. Digital technology has been approached far too often with a "Ready? FIRE!!! Uh, aim? WTF is 'aim'? mentality."

But is using film a solution? If you think it is, then it is for you.

I used film for 45 years. It worked fine. It was all we had. But because I navigated various career opportunities to running the digital side of a very large school portrait lab around 2000, I found parallel replacements to EVERY aspect of film photography I thought I might miss or need.

I was lucky to have the professional learning opportunities of Kodak Professional seminars, Digital Imaging Marketing Association seminars, and Photo Marketing Association International seminars from 1995 to 2010. The film world shrank as the digital world exploded, for all the right reasons. The perspective I gained in the lab and from training photographers to use digital capture instead of film capture has been very gratifying.

I still work with OLD film, by copying it to digital files. But I'll probably never see the inside of a darkroom again. I have zero interest in what, for me, is drudgery.

On the other hand, all the knowledge I gained from decades of film use transferred to digital photography just fine. I get what I want with much finer control, and more quickly, than with film. The advantages of digital bits over chemical atoms for practical imaging applications are far more numerous. The biggest one is that if you have a print, you can show it off in one place at a time, but if you digitize that image, it can be "everywhere all at once," with very little effort. And if you understand the nuances of digital printing, you can make excellent prints on a myriad of papers and other substrates.

If you value slowing down, deliberating, controlling, and thinking about what you're doing, you can train yourself to ignore all or some of the automation that you find on your digital camera. Spend more time planning, lighting, and composing the scenes you're photographing. All the same basic controls are there, just as they were half a century ago. They're just easier to use.

I want to use film from time to time. I hope more people use it so it won't be too expensive like now. I must say these.
1. Film isn't better than digital.
2. Film is good enough for me but I don't particularly like the film look (or any kind of look because I believe the look of some medium is its inherit shortcoming.)
3. I don't really care for the slowing down. In fact I shoot slowly whether it's film or digital. I don't shoot more when I shoot digital either.
4. Film doesn't last longer in my opinion. In fact in my opinion it won't last as long as digital.
But I want to use film because it's fun to use film. Only now it's way too expensive.

By 1988 I had long since made my career choices and was already working full-time in a college Art dept. as the photography instructor. Music was administratively housed under the Art dept. and I hung out there a lot. I wasn't real familiar with everything in the recording studio but I enjoyed helping out as I was involved with their hardware purchasing. They told me we need this and I bought it.

Over many decades I have amassed a library of between 2500 - 3000 CDs. I've seen public libraries with collections that are pitiful compared to mine. Long ago I stopped playing CDs and ripped everything to computer hard drives. The original CDs wound up in boxes stored in the guest bedroom -- that's a lot of boxes. My wife complained periodically but I had this hangup with the I've got to be legal thing -- had to have the originals. About a decade ago I finally got past that a gave 90% of them away. Still have two boxes of the ones I can't part with. The overwhelming majority of what I have has never been released on vinyl. 80% of my library goes poof! Oh no! If I was left with 20% in vinyl how would I listen to it? My entire library fits on a 2.5 inch solid state hard drive that fits in my shirt pocket. Earlier this evening I spent a delightful hour listening to the Krasni Quartet play Vissarion Shebalin string quartets -- wonderful! And not available on vinyl. My son laughs at his old man and his music library because it's all out there on streaming services. I've looked, he's right but I don't need them. One thing's for sure it's not out there on vinyl.

I am not a hipster but perhaps, at age 79 a fossil. I am very much into digital, having a Canon 5DMK4, an R5 and an R7 and many Canon lenses.

That being said, I have fond memories of shooting B & W film and doing my own processing. I had a Crown Graphic 4 X 5 and a Rolleiflex 2.8 D. I never relinquished the Rollei and am currently having it expertly restored. I recently bought and restored a Crown Graphic 4 X 5 "Special", and it looks and works like new.

I plan on doing my own processing of film and printing my photos in a darkroom. I will enjoy the process and will also keep doing digital. Film just gives another dimension to the art of photography. It is all good.

Even for those who seldom, if ever, have any creative notions cooking between their ears, they can imagine themselves more creative if their "creative process" involves an excessive amount of process.

Unfortunately, "process" is not the creative half of the term "creative process". IOW more process tips the balance AWAY from creativity.

Theres nothing creative about spooling up film reels, mixing chemicals, loading or unloading cameras, etc. Worse yet is a life tied to the need for darkness, plumbing, and ventilation. Analog photography is a ball and chain, not a liberator of creative minds.