Hi everyone. After days of internal debate, I ultimately decided to respond to this... This (and the related thread) is largely academic. Personally, I prefer using film. That said, it doesn't make one shred of difference what you (the reader) or anyone else uses, on my work or yours. There are blatantly obvious pros and cons to each. It takes about as much time for me to print a good photograph as it takes to sit in front of a computer and adjust areas of pixels. The environment gets screwed up by chemicals used in developing, just as much as it gets screwed up by the production and disposal of digital paraphernalia (computer components, batteries, etc). I could go on with examples, but I won't. Time spent arguing about such inconsequential matters is time lost from creating images. When photography was first introduced, alarmists of the time declared that it was the end of painting. 169 years later, I know dozens of people who make their living (some doing *very* well, actually) as fine-art painters. I expect that, likewise, film will continue to be around past the day I draw my final breath. And that should have no impact whatsoever on the digital-using folks. Film's existence isn't a threat, and certainly shouldn't be perceived as such; it is merely an alternative. By the same token, the proliferation of digital photography has no effect on those who still use film. Eugene Atget, hailed by many as the most influential photographer in history, preferred an albumen process that was all but extinct when his work flourished. Black and white photographs are prevalent today, fifty years after color film became widely available (again, wrongly predicted to be the death blow to B/W photography). Why should the digital revolution kill film? It seems to me that the only real difference is in the consumer market. Your average Joe created mediocre-at-best film images. Now your average Joe creates mediocre-at-best digital images. What's really going to twist peoples' noodles is when the two forms merge, when it is easier to scan film, when it is easier to make chemical prints from digital media. What will people argue about then? I suppose it is an inate manifestation of human nature to be drawn into one camp or the other, and be so passionate about that mindset that it falls just short of being militantly opposed to everything else. Remember the good old days when you were a member of either the Nikon team or the Canon team--or simply an outcast? I have gone both routes. I like the way I can shoot a thousand frames on an 8-GB card, and I also like the way I am forced to be selective when I'm shooting 24. I like being able to upload images to a website the day they were shot, and I also like knowing that nobody can download my best photographs and repost them to the Usenet quagmire. When it comes down to it, I particularly enjoy the "feel" of a film-originated image and the satisfaction that comes from producing an illogical image completely in the camera (I dislike post-exposure manipulation--no burning or dodging for me!). When the dust settles, 95% of me is a film guy. That's just what I choose to do, that's where my tastes are. But I am just as likely as the next person to give a digital photographer a hug. <analogy> Depending upon who you ask, are CDs better than LPs? I've heard plenty from both sides. </analogy> I'll continue to do what I do, and happily at that. It works for me, and that's all that counts. Truth be told, I really don't give a half a crap about how the next photographer operates. After all, It has absolutely no bearing on my creative pursuits. Darin
