Longevity, some of my film bodies are 60 years old, I have never had a digital last longer than 5 apart from a couple whose batteries are no longer obtainable or whose memort cards went out of vogue.
For me as an ex pro digital had its advantages for fast turnaround,especially for a lot of my work which went direct to the web. Product shots etc. Fast to photograph, edit and upload and I would imagine for a lot of pros doing product, weddings, bar mitzvahs its a boon thanks to its speed.
But for me it lacked art and turned my photography into a production line job, press,click, download, edit, upload and start again. It had all the charm of being a robot. I got lazy, let the camera back all the decisions and photography became a treadmill.
These days I own a happy snappy digital for when I just want some snapshots but I aim to be serious with film. Just from the test shots I have been doing I have rediscovered my love of photography because old film bodies have character, tactile feedback. The process forces me to slow down and consider, the cost imposes a criticality to my eye for the subject.
When I pick up one of my film cameras its like meeting an old friend again, a digital always felt like just handling plastic productionised tech. My film cameras dit my hands like a gunslingers favourite .45.
Technically digital may be where its at for resolution but film has a quality all its own and photography in its widest sense is often not about quality reduced to technicalities. Stop and think about some of the outstanding images of the 20th century. Buzz Aldrin on the moon, does anyone say, ‘gosh what a horror, Neil Armstrong cut the feet off and disnt control flare’.The famous pics from the Vietnam war, does anyone look at them and think ‘wow that spherical aberration and coma really ruins the look’. These are extreme examples just used to show that technical quality isnst the be all and end all of photography.
When cameras first came along some people felt painting was dead, I mean why bother spending hours capturing a landscape or a portrait with all that mucking about, getting paint everywhere and then have only the artists impression when yoj coukd take a picture in 30 minutes back then and get it exactly how it looked. The problem is you cant create ‘The Haywaine’ or ‘The fighting Temeraire’ with a camera. You might pull off ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ on a good day I suppose but the final product would not excite people because it would be just a portrait.
Thats not to say cameras had no place, Mandy Rice Davies appearing at the Old Bailey is an amazing press pic from the 60s and you would have been hard pressed to capture it with oils.
So its not an either or choice its horses for courses and one doesnt supplant the other.
---------- Post added 03-04-20 at 12:32 AM ----------
Oh and another reason........when I was on holiday last year I came back with 4000 pics in the digital and 72 pics on film. Take a guess whats been looked at.
Yup....the film got looked at as fast as it was processes. The 4000 pics have scarecly been glanced at apart from about 6 which I quickly edited to show people some of the highlights. Just cant be bothered to spend a week poring over the pics in front of a PC.
Back in the day I used to shoot all the holidays and big events to slides and no digital can ever capture the light they way it looks when projected onto a screen and get the brilliant beight skies they way a transparancy can when its projected no matter how high you turn the brightness knob on your monitor