I can remember not so long ago this same discussion about film v/s digital.
I, along with many others were of the mind set that digital would never surpass film. That digital was only a fad and a crummy one at that.
Remember the, hang on to your film camera as film will never be replaced by a fad. Digital will never surpass the technical quality of film so all true photographic artists will shun digital.
Now look where we are!
If we cling to the past, we will always be playing catch up.
Dan :D

As I read this thread I am a tiny bit distressed at the messages that seem to hold a whole younger generation in low regard based upon its approach to photography. I think this criticism misses something important.

The percentage of people in the world who take pictures now is vastly greater than it ever was in the past. But this vast increase in the percentage of folks making images is not about using fancy dedicated equipment. Rather, it is about people using smart phones and very simple cameras. Most of the new photographers are not interested in making great art. They are interested in making a record of themselves and of their cohort. Phone cameras work great for that purpose and more sophisticated equipment offers no important benefit in this realm.

The percentage of people in the world who are concerned about taking serious art photos has never been very large. I think that those (relatively few) who have that orientation will probably always migrate toward more capable equipment, assuming that they can afford and can understand that equipment. And even these more photographically serious folks will still enjoy good phone style cameras (or point and shoot cameras) because those are more likely to be available when folks stumble onto great photographic situations.

I have no doubt that there will always be a market for sophisticated photo equipment. The compulsion to make interesting images will grab a certain number of folks -- including some younger ones. I'm just not sure that the sophisticated equipment of the future will always have a mirror that bounces out of the way during the image capture process in the style of the old SLRs. And I am not worried about that. Why should I be?

RPbySC,

I have both the Canon 5D MkII and the Canon 7D along with a bunch of lenses.

That said, I also have the Sony NEX-7 (along with a bunch of lenses including the Zeiss 24mm f1.8)

I also own the Sony RX 1, RX-100II & the RX-100. I usually take the Sonys out to play with & use the Canons for the more serious stuff.

I shot this with the RX 1 last Saturday night right after sunset. I took 5 shots using RAW capture and then combined them in Photomatix Pro converting it into a High Resolution jpeg. Then I added some more jpegs that I shot using the in-camera filter effects (monochrome + red, yellow, blue & green). I balanced, adjusted for crop, light, contrast, saturation and added a light touch of sharpening in Photoshop Elements 10.

Photogdog

A professional photographer I know sent the following out by email just as an interesting opinion. It seems that most people on UHH are in the older generation as far as photography experience goes. Anybody agree or disagree or not care?

By Kirk Tuck – He was in the Samsung Booth at PhotoPlus Expo.

I can profile the average camera buyer in the U.S. right now without looking at the numbers. The people driving the market are predominately over 50 years old and at least 90% of them are men. We're the ones at whom the retro design of the OMD series camera are aimed. We're the ones who remember when battleship Nikons and Canons were actually needed to get great shots and we're the ones who believe in the primacy of the still image as a wonderful means of communication and even art. But we're a small part of the consumer economy now and we're walking one path while the generations that are coming behind us are walking another path. And it's one we're willfully trying not to understand because we never want to admit that what we thought of as the "golden age of photography" is coming to an end as surely as the kingdom of Middle Earth fades away in the last book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

At this Expo we worshipped at the altar of the same basic roster of speakers and presenters who've been speaking and presenting for the last ten years. We've closed the loop and the choice offered to younger photographers is to sit and listen to people old enough to be their grandmothers or grandfathers wax on about how we used to do it in the old days or to not come at all.

When I listen to lectures about how the market has changed what I hear from my generation is how to take the tools we programmed ourselves to love and try to apply them to our ideas of what might be popular with end users today. So we buy D4's and 1DSmkIV's to shoot video on giant Red Rock Micro rigs and we rush to buy Zeiss cinema lenses because we want the control and the idea of ultimate quality in our offerings while the stuff that the current generation is thinking about is more concerned with intimacy, immediacy and verisimilitude rather than "production value." To the new generations the idea of veracity and authenticity always trumps metrics of low noise or high resolution. And that need for perfection is our disconnection from the creative process, not theirs.

Our generation's fight with digital, early on, was to tame the high noise, the weird colors, the slow buffers and the old technology which saddled us with wildly inaccurate and tiny viewfinders and batteries that barely lasted through a sneeze. We pride ourselves on the mastery but the market moved on and now those parameters are taken for granted. Like turning on a television and assuming it will work. We are still staring at the technical landscape which rigidly disconnects us from the emotional interface of the craft. If we don't jump that shark then we're relegated to being like the photographer who makes those precious black and white landscapes which utilize every ounce of his PhotoShop skills but which, in the end, become works that are devoid of any emotional context. In fact, they are just endless revisions of work that Ansel Adams did better, and with more soul, fifty years ago. Technique as schtick. Mastery for mastery's sake with no hook to pull in a new generation. Of course we like technically difficult work. It was hard for us to master all the processes a decade ago. Now it's a canned commodity, a pervasive reality, and what the market of smart and wired in kids are looking for is an emotional connection with their images that goes beyond the mechanical construct.

It's no longer enough to get something in focus, well exposed and color correct. It's no longer good enough to fix all the "flaws" in Photoshop. What the important audience wants now is the narrative, the story, the "why" and not the "how." The love, not the schematic.

So, what does this mean for the camera industry? It means that incremental improvements in quality no longer mean shit to a huge and restless younger market. They don't care if the image is 99% perfect if the content is exhilarating and captivating. No one cared if the Hobbit was available at 48 fps as long as the story was strong in 24 fps. No one cares if a landscape is perfect if there's a reason for the image of a landscape to exist. No one cares if a model is perfect if the model is beguiling.

What it really means for the camera industry is that the tools they offer the new generation must be more intuitively integrated and less about "ultimate." In this world a powerful camera that's small enough and light enough to go with you anywhere (phone or small camera) trumps the huge camera that may generate better billboards but the quality of which is irrelevant for web use and social media. The accessible camera trumps the one that needs a sherpa for transport and a banker for acquisition.

I look at the video industry and I see our generation drawn toward the ultimate production cameras. Cameras like the Red Epic or the Alexa. But I see the next generation making more intimate and compelling work with GH3's and Canon 5D2's and 3's. Or even cameras with less pedigrees. The cheaper cameras mean that today's younger film makers can pull the trigger on projects now instead of waiting for all the right stuff to line up.

If I ran one of the big camera companies I would forget the traditional practitioners and rush headlong toward the youth culture with offerings that allowed them to get to work now with the budgets they have. Ready to go out and shoot landscapes? Will a Nikon D800 really knock everyone's socks off compared to an Olympus OMD when you look at the images side by side on the web? No? Well, that's the litmus test. It's no longer the 16x20 gallery print because we don't support physical galleries any more.