Their loss.

Mark

There are some fine art photographers using digital, but especially in the USA, it’s not got the foothold that it has in other areas. I think it’s because of the longevity of the medium, the value of attaching a negative to a camera and a photographer. It’s to do with the provenance of the image.

Heather's comments about the grain of film photography is one I agree with. Even though I use digital, I do like to rough the images up by running them through some filters in Photosop. I tend to use Alien Skin’s Exposure, because I like the results. I can not say whether the GAFF filter is 100% accurate or true to the original film stock, but I like the effect. Much to my sister’s annoyance, I’ll happily “ruin” my crisp digital images by doing things to them in Photoshop. The RAW file is my negative, and I learned very quickly at uni that the negative is the start - you can do all kinds of things in a dark room. Photoshop is no different in this respect.

I'd love for someone to come up with a proper grain adding filter for Aperture/Lightroom. I don't want to have to export to Photoshop for that kind of effect.

Then why not simply shoot on film in the first place?
<devil's advocate, of course >

Even filters which do work in Aperture cause the image to be taken out of the usual adjustment layer. You have to use the Edit With> menu, and an editable copy is made. You can’t layer effects on the image in the way that you can do with adjustments. What is needed is an architecture close to Photoshop’s smart objects where filters can be applied, but without affecting the original image data.

I've moved on to digital. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages for me.

I can't see myself going back to film except as a curiosity once in a while. I took a long time to be convinced about digital, but now the convenience of it wins out over any drawbacks. The biggest advantage for me is not being constrained by film speed as I shoot mostly handheld and with available light.

No longer do I find myself unable to take a shot because the conditions have changed so much that the nice slow film I put in the camera that morning is next to useless.