Did video finish film? There is something that looks better in film and that is color. It has a surreal quality. Realer than real. It is just a latent image, after all, it's not the real schpiel.
It's like comparing a marshall stack to a solid state speaker, a piano to an electric keyboard, a CD to vinyl, etc, etc.
Just like video did with film. I predict that digital imaging will find its niche in the lower-end, bottom feeders and consumer level of the marketplace.
Art galleries and collectors are beginning to recognize digital art as a bona fide medium. Film is cost prohibitive leaving the future marketplace being flooded with digital images. Using the laws of supply and demand, this may mean that original cellulose will command a pretty penny.
I definitely see the commercial editorial and journalistic side switching over to strictly digital. Movies are using more CGI, but I can tell the difference. They call it seamless. They are also using a new breed of digital motion picture cameras in some of the studios.
The key will be faster processing of those images. When processors become faster, digital is will look better and better.
It's still cumbersome for shooting animated subjects. I'll take a 35mm for photos on the fly, or action, sports, or wildlife photography especially. Candid portraiture often requires quick action, as well.
Film is just one of many mediums in the art of photography. The question isn't either or. Digital is just another tool added to the palette of the photographer. There are still people who produce daguerreotypes yet there are, less time consuming, cost-effective and toxic methods to produce a latent image.
It's a really exiting time to be in the field. I would liken it to when the infancy of photography. It's truly a time to lay the groundwork of how images will be produced. We are essentially the pioneers of the digital age. The first of our kind to work with a particular medium which records the images as 1s and 0s instead of globs of silver molecules.
From a point of resolution film still has the ball in its court. If your output is digital for publication, it might be time to seriously consider going digital. Especially if you consider all of the man hours wasted from shoot to delivery of the finished film and then digitizing anyway. You can shoot, direct, or produce, a digital shoot and always know you've got the shot, on the spot. I would have a lot more hair on my head if it was always that easy.
One problem with the professional grade digital cameras and film backs for medium format is that they price prohibitive. Price is all relative. If you're shooting that amount of film than it might be a good investment. Another problem is that the digital products keep getting better, from year to year. This years top- of- the- line camera, is next year's very pricey paper- weight.
With a film camera you can always digitize
your images. Buy a decent scanner, or have drum scans made. With digital images
you can Inter- neg them and print them with archival grade paper. Film is more
versatile in the long run and finer grained than digital is yet.