[Ratmagiclady]

I'm always concerned with the longevity of digital. Accidents can happen to film archives, (I know I am lucky to have just a briefcase full of everything I have for negs, out of all these years,) but the fact is, some can survive, to be found and recognized later.

Digital requires a ton of highly sophisticated and fragile and invisible stuff to be continually-maintained (and not, ever, necessarily obsoleted,) ...without interruption, and all that goes into an energy-intensive form of civilization to keep *that* going. ....or the most-photographed time in human history could end up becoming a 'digital dark age.' So the stakes are higher for massive losses, even if you can back up your images all over the place.

A single negative can survive all on its own, even if forgotten for lifetimes. And often, what people want to see later, isn't what folks thought was important at the time, so I consider it almost a duty to keep shooting film, if it comes to talking this way.

Digital's good for a lot of what I used to have some useful skills in film which are now kind of obsolete: getting the shot, getting it done fast, even just being quicker on the reload than anyone I knew is now just an occasional curiosity when the arthritis permits.

Still don't go out without a film camera, just on general principle, even if it's just the ME Super tucked in with a minimal digital kit. It's a big reason it had to be Pentax for digital with me.

[dugrant153]

That's my biggest concern with digital. I've had hard drives fail on me before, and if your files aren't backed up properly it can be expensive retrieving them. Storage is cheap, but cheap storage is only going to last a few years before mechanical problems become likely; true archival storage doesn't exist yet in digital as far as I'm concerned, at least not to the duration of well-kept film.

Same here for me. It's also time consuming to back it all up onto two hard drives or CDs (which apparently don't last unless of archival grade), etc etc etc.

and sometimes, if the HD fails, your images could be gone forever.

This is one of the reasons I'm trying out film right now. I still keep my digital handy for certain situations, but film seems to be my 'go to thing' for now. Plus, gotta love the big massive viewfinder.

[mtags24]

It just sounds like you need some discipline! No one has to shoot a thousand images a day on a digital camera. Just take the same approach... and use all that money you are saving on film and development for something else you want (maybe more lenses?)