Same here cause I am a Film_Connaisseur or a Film Dinosaur! In my personal opinion I don’t think the 35-mm format in digital (even in the full frame format) has reached its pentacle. If anyone will take it there, I believe it to be Sony. However it may take a few more years. Given the fact that I am a Die_Hard Minolta fan, I continue to use medium format for some of my professional work.

I don't find it odd as digital is more foregiving than film. You can rescue shots in post processing that would have normally been wasted with film. It has made me lazy at times thinking "I'll just fix it later". We also live in a time where people want instant feedback and digital fits the bill. Don't like it, delete it and shoot again. I do find it funny though that alot of folks will by a DSLR with one or two kit lenses and shoot on auto all the time. I am slowly relearning photography as an art form and taking the time while shooting so that in post I only have minor fixes and cropping to do.

Al

I know what you mean.

Good thing however is that photography classes in general still educate on film and darkroom practices. If I have my way, this will always be a first requirement with a photographer.

Understanding the print is HUGE, if you want to sell prints.

If you don't, some photographers are making a career out of digital from beginning to end ($) never even having printed a single photo.

What a shame.

Carl

I don't find it surprising that many DSLR owners have never used film cameras. One uses what one grows up with technology-wise. Likewise, there are people who have never driven a car with a stick shift, never used a slide rule vs. a calculator, never used a manual or electric typewriter vs. a computer, never cooked a meal from scratch, etc.

I'm not sure how many film camera users ever actually worked in a darkroom. I only did it while taking photography classes--and then only working with black and white film. My dad was a semi-professional black-and-white photographer back in the 40s and early 50s, shooting weddings, babies, special events, etc. He spent countless hours in his darkroom. However, once we moved to the suburbs at about the same time that color film was taking off, he pretty much abandoned still photography for many years and never did rebuild his darkroom.

I think the vast majority of film photographers took their film to photo labs for processing and were often disappointed with the results--a combination of cameras with limited capabilities, bad technique, and mediocre lab work. Despite its potentially great resolution and tonality, film had/has its obvious drawbacks, such as perishabilty, usage inflexibility (no auto ISO!), the hassles of loading and unloading the film (which in itself freaked out a lot of people), the need to carry spare roles of film, damage from airport x-ray machines, variable color lab quality control, and--except for Polaroid cameras--no instant gratification. Some of my relatives and friends still use P&S film cameras, and the quality of the photos they end up with is generally quite poor compared to those of my wife's subcompact digital P&S (especially when I crop and pp the images--but even when I don't).

I believe that one thing will remain constant as people now buy DSLRs instead of SLRs. Many, if not most, will continue to rely heavily on their camera's automatic mode, and scores of would-be Ansel Adamses will remain basically clueless about apertures, shutter speeds, depth of field, ISO, white balance, noise reduction, dynamic range, etc. Let's face it, most cameras can take pretty decent images under general conditions, but it takes a lot of learning and practice to capture great images, especially when working under challenging conditions. How many people do each of us know who have never read their camera's instruction manual--except for maybe the first few pages that tell you how how to insert the battery and turn the camera on? How often do you see someone using their camera's built-in flash to photograph someone far out of flash range? And even though I should know better after all these years, how often in the heat of the moment do I forget to check my ISO, switch to spot meter, use fill flash, etc.? (Way too often!)

By the way, my dad mainly used a Speed Graphic, but also took and developed some pretty impressive photos with his earlier Brownie. I wonder what he could do with my A700 if he were still alive?

Carl is right. They still teach with film, and using the darkroom etc.

I can certainly appreciate why some have never used flim. A certain..."why bother", and if you have never used it, then you may not appreciate what it "could" offer. Despite what some suggest, I dont think film will die out, it will hold a small, but loyal area of the market, there will always be a desire by at least some, to use the "old ways" as such.

In contrast, I have found that some people who have never shot film, have an interest in trying it, some that is.

And again, Carl is also on the ball..I know some people who have never made a print, ever from digital. That is kind of sad really.

In this digital age, what exactly constitutes making a print? If I pull the SD card out of my wife's Canon digital elph, stick it into the card-reading slot on my HP all-in-one printer, and, without any post processing, print a 4x6 of one of the images, haven't I, by definition, made a print, albeit by a much simpler process than would be required to print a magazine cover? Perhaps there is a big difference between what Carl calls "understanding the print" and making it. All the post-processing techniques in the world still require understanding the fundamentals of color, lighting, and composition, along with a certain amount of subjective preference. A number of times I have had several versions of the same image printed, and six months later I still can't decide which one I like best.

I always wonder if digital makes us sloppier photographers. We can take hundreds of shots in a matter of minutes and hope that a couple turn out well. When you shoot with film you tend to spend more time trying to get things right on the first or second try. I think that when you know you only have 24-36 exposures to go through, you end up spending more time on composition. You can't blow through film like you can a 8GB memory card.

When I mean make a print, I mean anything!

Honestly, I know a few..not even a single 6"x4" has come out of their digital. All on the pc. Not suggesting most are like this, but hmmm, I find it a bit odd.

Thanks for clarifying, Barry. Yes, I know quite a few people who never have any of their images printed. They just post them on the web or view them on their TV or on a digital frame. Some pp them before they do so, others just take them right off the memory cards as is. Hope this doesn't put all the photo album and picture frame manufacturers out of business.

The creative in-between thing that my daughter is now into is having custom photo books printed instead of sticking individual prints into photo albums. Pretty neat but not very flexible for future use.

Hopefully prints will not become obsolete in the brave new digital world. Besides dozens of our own photo albums, I have many of my parents' albums and boxes and boxes of my dad's old black-and-white prints of all sizes--along with virtually all of his meticulously filed negatives from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. My own film negatives are, of course, in total disarray. Digital certainly has an advantage in this regard.

As we see these day that every thing changes, the same principles are still there and apply.
"Photography is drawing with light"
The thing that changes the most is the materials we use analog versus digital.
Striving to create the "excelent" picture in stead of a "throw away snap", is what makes the diffrence.
It doesn't matter how you made it ..

Just my two euro cents