jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yes, and it's called progress. How would you like to go out on a cold morning and crank your car's engine to get it started? Remember those long, hot, noisy vacation drives with the windows open? I prefer A/C in my car. Remember getting stuck in a one-hour traffic jam as your clutch leg started to cramp. I don't mind having my camera lens snap to a fast, sharp focus.

Shutterbug57

I think both digital and film have their place - they do in my stable. The way you approach each is radically different. FWIW, my film bodies are a Nikon N90s & a Mamiya M645 (first gen.) and my main digital bodies are a Nikon D-500 & Nikon D-200 (backup/second camera).

When shooting film, you start making artistic decisions when you buy your film. You need to know the characteristics of the films available and how they support or detract from the shot you are going to make. Color saturation and grain structure are important considerations as are the dynamic range and how far you can push or pull a film and what that does to the resulting shot. When you buy your film, especially B&W, you are also thinking what developer will give me the desired result. If you are going to print, you may well also be thinking about the paper you will use. Then you buy the film.

In the digital world, your body is your film. Megapixles, ISO range & dynamic range are primarily considerations, but so are FX or DX and frames per second, etc. Our film has become conjoined with our hardware. Camera bodies have also sucked in part of the traditional lens function - look at all the gelded lenses that have no way to independently control the aperture.

With digital, your considerations at the time of purchase are less about how any final image will look and more about the hardware. Most of the “film related” artistic decisions are made in post. Want Tri-X grain, click here. Don’t like it, click undo and try another preset. Want old Velvia 50 color saturation, slide this and that, then save a preset. The list goes on and on.

I am not saying one is better than the other, but each have their place. I use digital for the majority of my shooting, but when I want a particular artistic image, film is where I turn. When my kids were at home and playing lots of sports. I shot their games as a journalist and published shots of the games on a team website. Sure I shot my kids, but I shot everybody else’s as well. For this, digital was by far the best way to go. I could shoot a game and have everything published within a few hours. My main concerns were about capturing publishable images - focus, exposure & compensation. The look of the “film” was not important and, for outside night games or dimly lit gyms, noise was just a part of the process (D-200), but noise and grain are completely different. Don’t believe that? Try picking the noise pattern you want in your image.

Now that the kids are adults, I have more time to shoot more artistic images. While digital is still a big part of that world, for many shots I find myself grabbing a film camera. While I enjoy the ease and cost of shooting digital, I find that the images are antiseptic. Shoot at ISO 100 and get no noise - great, but there is no grain or character either. Sure you can add “film grain” in post with an effect, but that is not film grain any more than adding a watercolor effect makes the image a watercolor painting.

Maybe it’s part of being an old fart, but I grew up making the “film decisions” and I can see the difference in the final images between film and digital. If I want the grain of Tri-X pushed 2 stops and processed in D-76, then I will shoot Tri-X and develop it that way. I still have a couple bricks of Old Velvia 50 in the freezer, but I am not going to use it for a portrait shoot when I can get Portra 160.

For me, there are things film does best and things digital does best. The trick is in knowing which tool to use for any given job.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

Maybe your brain hasn't been update, but mine is updated everyday, that's not to say I use the updates , but I learn something new everyday, the problem is remembering it

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

The only thing I miss about my film SLRs (Spotmatic, Nikon F, SRT-100) are the large, bright viewfinders. Mixing D-76 with no shoes, in the snow, uphill both ways is nothing I will ever miss. Mama, don’t take my SD cards away.

bobramewe

Add Loc: S.W.Florida

I still like a J3 Cub!

mikeroetex Loc: Lafayette, LA

I've heard those fancy new Winchester repeating rifles are much better than those muskets we been using in this war. All those guys do is point and shoot, no reload, no gunpowder packing.

bobramewe

Perfect!

Burtzy Loc: Bronx N.Y. & Simi Valley, CA

I couldn't agree more. I've been a photographer all my life and though the tools have changed, the techniques I learned from more than sixty years of indulging in my passion for the image are still as valuable today as they were my first shot of the "Spaceman" in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in 1954. I spent my adult entire career as a film editor, moving from Moviolas to KEM Editing machines to today's digital workflow, and though the tools have changed, the creative decision making remains. Just as in the days of "Lassie," the rule remains the same regardless of the editing tools: "When in doubt, cut to the dog."

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

I owned a Nikon FTN, and an F2, F3, and F4, and finally an F5. I can truthfully state that I am far happier with a digital Nikon than I ever was with film. Why? Glad you asked, it is called instant gratification. I can see my test shot results and make adjustments for the second and final shot based on 60 years of experience. And, my eyes went a long time ago, if I'm going to get action shots or pictures of my red haired devil of a grand daughter I need auto focus, and auto exposure, and continuous auto focus, and Group Auto Focus, and an exceed 5 processor, and center weighted metering, and 10 frames a second, and more than 36 exposures between loading more ammunition, and everything else they come up with. YEA innovation. As that Chrysler guy said, "lead or get run over". Yea, that's me, don't want to be road kill.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

To SOME extent I have to agree with you - when you paid money for each shot, waited a week to get your photos back, and only had the option of cropping a photo if you printed it yourself, you spent a little more time thinking about composition and exposure! Even more so with a view camera, with which you could spend half an hour getting ready to take the photo. My college had an extremely popular photography course that was very limited in size because they had view camera kits that each student was loaned for the semester. No roll film. No mailing your film in for development. Students really had to learn composition and exposure. Today is much simpler, but what does make a "photographer" is paying attention to exposure and composition, rather than "pointing and shooting".

crazydaddio Loc: Toronto Ontario Canada

Lol.
Brain doesnt get the update...firmware and hardware doesnt change. It's like Microsoft Excel...same spreadsheet app, but we load into it different macros and numbers :)

Shutterbug57

Better watch out - she already got your Kodachrome...

And your CF cards...

Shutterbug57

Gotta love an aircraft that uses a stick and a cork for a gas gauge.

ncribble Loc: Albuquerque, NM

George, you probably like “the Bang, Pop, Cough, Fart, and smell of the ole radial engines of yesteryear too. I do, but nothing is as smooth as our jetf of today. But Oh! Those memories.. Norm