"Nature's Best" contest and film vs digital

Alan Justice writes ...

Are the changes statistically significant?

Yes If you don't think so ask Kodak and Fuji how their film sales
are doing. And the tipping point for film vs digital new camera sales
came in 2003 when digital first surged ahead for the first time. By
2005, according to the PMA, digital cameras would out-sell film cameras
by a 4-1 margin (20.5 million digital vs 4.6 million film bodies, down
from 19.7 film cameras sold in 2000).

I wonder how the digital/film selection differs depending on
level of experience. And how does it differ for landscape
vs wildlife shooters?

If there were some way to determine the top 20 nature/wildlife
photographers who made their reputations with 35 mm film (I feel
confident in naming maybe 10 of them ... Shaw, Lanting, Mangelsen,
Brandenburg, Wolfe etc) then I'd bet 80-90% of them have switched to
digital and dropped 35mm. Take the top 20 landscape photographers
(which will probably be one medium format guy - RG Ketchum - and the
rest 4x5 or 8x10" view camera guys) and I'd bet a high percentage
(maybe all) are still shooting film (Velvia for the most part) since
the highest quality 39 Mpixel digital backs are still extremely
expensive (say $30,000 or so, something a commercial studio will pay
but not a landscape photographer) and while these are better than
medium format they don't seem to quite match large format.

It's not a matter of level of experience, it's a question of whether or
not digital offers more advantages than what they are now using at a
reasonable cost.

For example, in deciding if I want to go digital for Canon, I might be happy
with the 16.7 MPix 1Ds MII for scenics, but it only shoots 4 fps, so would
not work well for wildlife

Right, so get the 1Ds M II for scenics if you need to print that large
and get the 1D Mark II for wildlife, which is what many of us like
myself and Roger are using for birds and bears etc. 8 Mpixels is
enough for wildlife, I feel.

My 1V is 10 fps, and even with just a desk scanner (4k dpi) I
get 24 MPix (with film)

This was explained to you previously by Roger, about why you can't just
say one is better than another because it has a higher pixel count. To
use your 24 Mpixel value (it's actually more like 21 Mpix if you scan
to the edge of unmounted film, less if scanning mounted slides), if you
shot a crappy high speed film, say 400 iso pushed one stop to 800, it
would be grainy and not as saturated as slower films. You scan it and
you have 24 Mpix, you scan Velvia or Provia 100F and you also have 24
Mpix ... are they the same even though they have the same pixel count?
No. You could make this more absurd by scanning the grainy, low
saturated film with a drum scanner at up to 12,000 dpi and have around
182 Mpixels ... is this 7 or 8 times better than the Velvia scanned at
24 Mpixels or is it inferior for practical purposes? All you've done
is scan grain and you still have poor colors.

For the same reasons, pixels from the better digital cameras are better
than scanned film pixels.

Bill