Sorry this isn't a new revelation to me and I'm really preaching to the choir here, but I just can't get over such simple things as the impossibly wide dynamic range of film, the pics are both crap, and are unedited, but both of them would have been blown out so bad the camera would have exploded in my hands if I had used my K20D. This is all K1000 SE using my A35-105 F3.5 with regular Kodak 200 color film. The pic of the father and son fishing was so bright I couldn't see to even focus correctly and I had no idea that cloud of bugs was even there (dammit bugs you're in my shot!), I was expecting the background to wash out the whole pic in white, but instead somehow the bounce lighting off of the darkest dingiest concrete retaining wall ever (the color on top of it is accurate) was enough to front light him and the solid wall of glare on the water turned to sparkles. The second pic was just the sun behind some trees but the K20D would have turned it into a close up of a zebra and not a whole hell of a lot else.
I suppose for not much over a decade in real development so far the DSLR world is doing pretty good but its still got a LOOOONG way to go.
(sorry for file size, forgot to resize)