In article , Ken Hart
wrote:



You really should start shooting digital. I gave up the smell of my wet
darkroom years ago.

You needed better ventilation!

while that certainly helps, there's still an 'aroma'.

I enjoy the whole wet system process.

that's fine, except that your knowledge of digital is at best deeply
flawed, and in most cases, downright wrong, thereby voiding any
comparison and preventing any form of enjoyment of digital.

The fact that the techniques available to modify the image are limited:
density, color balance, and cropping; so I have to get the image right
at the point of exposure.

for film, that's true.

for digital, that's very, very wrong.

far more can be adjusted after the fact than with film, including white
balance and in some cases, focus and depth of field.

plus, if you make a mistake with digital, there's undo, making it very
easy to experiment and learn new techniques.

in a wet darkroom, there is no undo. you have to start over, which can
quickly become very expensive and very time consuming.

tl;dr - digital is *much* more capable.

The ruggedness of the image: I've had too many hard drive/optical disk
failures, and a modicum of care suffices for a film negative.

buy better hardware and make better backups.

unlike film, a duplicate of a digital image is 100% identical to the
original, can be made instantly and as many times desired, then stored
in multiple geographically diverse locations, all done entirely
automatically, which basically guarantees that nothing will ever be
lost short of the planet being destroyed, which if that were to happen,
the loss of the images won't matter anymore.

it's not possible to make a backup of film. a duplicate of a film image
is always a second generation copy, which incurs some loss, plus it
takes time and money to do, so it's rarely (if ever) done. film also
requires special storage to prevent damage or loss due to mold, dirt,
fire, flood, etc.

Finally, I like to have the print in my hands and not on a screen. I've
had people (not "real photographers") ask me why my photos look better
than the stuff they see online. I tell them it's because they can
"connect" with my photographs without a screen.

there are these things called printers.

there are also places called print shops for those who do not wish to
purchase a printer, or want a something larger than what their own
printer can do (which is usually 8x10).

camera stores will even take a memory card and print every image on it,
as if it was a roll of film.

another reason why your friends might say that is because they don't
have quality displays, or they're looking at low quality photos (which
also exist with film too).

compare a photo on a wide gamut hi-dpi display versus a print and
they'll have a very different opinion because the image on the display
will have much better colours and a much wider dynamic range than
anything a print can do.