jeremy wrote:
"David Dyer-Bennet" wrote in message news:4655ba7b$0$962
None of which is to say that digital is the right move for you. If I knew
you and watched you work and saw the results I might have an opinion --
but your own opinion is the one that matters.

I am in no hurry to stop using my film gear. I'm an amateur, not a
professional, and I shoot for my own pleasure. Part of the pleasure of
photography, for me, is the tactile gratification that comes from using
older, heavier, mainly-metal, equipment.

I do understand the appeal of finely-made mechanical equipment. I still
somewhat regret the Leica M3 that I haven't had since, oh, about 1978.

I have a digital P&S, and I am not pleased with all of its automation,
especially autofocus. But I do carry it around for snapshots.

My excuse for mine (a Fuji F11), despite the frustrations, is precisely
that I carry it around. I do wish it had manual focus, and real manual
exposure (and good user interfaces for those two). And a tilt/swivel
LCD. And a pony. No, wait, the pony was from another list.

To the point that I'm semi-seriously considering a Nikon D40; but that
wouldn't live in my bag full-time. It'd be smaller and less obtrusive
in the little bag with just a couple of small lenses, though. And would
be *far* better in low light. And would cost me $550 if I get lucky
on ebay, after buying and paying for installation of the katzeye screen.
Ahem. Anyway.

I just haven't been bitten by the fascination that many others have with
digital. I used to be an early adopter of new technology, but that phase
seems to have passed, and the Luddite in me has resurfaced.

It has completely revolutionized my printing, and never mind I didn't
have a darkroom in the house where I started doing digital printing. I
was a pretty good B&W printer, a mediocre color printer. And with
digital I am now a quite good color printer as well as B&W printer.

And then I see how much cleaner the digital captures are than the film
scans, and how much better digital handles tungsten and other
non-daylight color balances, and how much better than film digital is in
low light. It'd be horrible to have to go back, digital is just *so*
much better for what I do (once I reached the DSLR level with a Fuji S2
at the very end of 2002).

Sounds like you do mostly slow film for landscapes and such; a very
different situation, where digital isn't nearly so clearly technically
superior (though a lot of people still argue that it is).

At least I can say that I know what I want, and why I want it, rather than
following the apparent herd mentality and chucking all my classic gear and
replacing it with something new. I wonder how many people have gotten over
their initial fascination with digital, then put their cameras up on the
shelves and haven't bothered to use them in a long time? We never hear from
them, but I'll bet that they represent a significant percentage of
purchasers of digital cameras.

As you say, we don't hear from them. But I know *so many* photographers
who were mostly in a rut, whose interest has been revitalized by
digital. And more who hadn't been photographers before, but are now
getting into it.

I was happy with film when I shot Kodachrome, and I'm happy today with
Velvia. In my case, there seems to be no compelling reason to change over.
The cost of film was never an issue for me--especially since it was always
spread over the entire year. Like buying cigarettes--taken singly the
purchases are small, taken in the aggregate the amount spent in a year is
daunting.

I think we're starting to see the people who acquired a hand-me-down
digital camera when they were 10 years old. I have negatives going back
to when I was 8, but the camera wasn't much, not *nearly* as good as any
digital P&S today, and...I couldn't afford enough film to learn much.
The kids being handed those cameras will mostly never be photographers,
but the ones who *do* will have started working seriously much earlier.
And some of them will be the ones who didn't, either that early, or
maybe at all, have the focus and application to learn film exposure and
darkroom work, but who can learn from the instant feedback of digital.
Some of them will have "the eye", and they'll be wonderful.

I do think it's curtains for photographers like myself who are mediocre
artists and good technicians. Luckily it's not my profession, so I can
continue to do what I like and make pictures that interest my family and
friends and occasionally a few more.