Let's play a little game. Which is film, which is digital?
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All shot by me. No fair cheating & looking on my site
Also, not exactly what I'd call "snapshots" or "tossaway" photos. In fact a couple of those are hanging in a restaurant in Willimantic, CT, and one graces the cover of the 2006 P&W company calendar.
Each format has its advantages and disadvantages. Currently I shoot 99% digital with a Canon EOS 20D. The beauty of that system is I could use all the same lenses I had for my Elan 7. I've printed both Kodachrome 64 and Provia 100F slides and digitals from the 20D up to 20" x 30" in size. I'll tell you right now the 20D absolutley blows away the K-64 or Provia by a wide margin. The detail it can capture is unbelievable. Now I'm not debating comparing the 20D to a 4x5 because that's not a fair comparison - of course the 4x5 will blow it away, just as it'll blow away a 35mm slide.
I started shooting film in the late 80's, starting out with T-Max and Tech Pan, doing all the processing & printing myself. I started shooting trains around 2000, and was a die-hard slide shooter, resiting the urge to move to digital. That is until the 20D was out for a while and proved itself to be a formidable camera. I made the switch in December 2004, and haven't looked back. In that time I've shot well over 15,000 images, having quite a few published in Trains, Railfan & Railroad, CTC Board, Railpace and other publications.
As for keepers from the 15,000 (about 10,000 of which are train photos - the remainder are my kids & other stuff), I'd say I'm at about a 55-60% keeper rate - much higher than my slide days, which was somewhere around 35-40%. The one thing digital has allowed me to do is to experiment more. With two young kids, budget is a key factor in my shooting. When I was shooting slides, it was $6 a roll for the flim, and $8 for processing. That would always be in the back of my head. Now I just fire away as something strikes my eye. The only cost is about an hour of post processing in my digital "darkroom" - something I can do after the wife & kids go to bed. And the cost of a few DVD-Rs and a couple hard drives - relatively cheap.
Do I still shoot film? Yep. I carry my Elan 7 with me in my bag - currently loaded with a roll of Ilford Delta 100, and my old Minolta XE-5 makes it's way out of the closet every now & then. But by far, my film consumption has drastically dropped. I'd say about 1% of my shots are film, if it's even that much.... For me, it's mostly economic - the amount of money I've "saved" from not shooting film has already paid for the camera. I think breakeven was about 4,500 images. Well over that point now...
Again, to each their own. Just making the point that both formats can co-exist, even in a serious and/or artistic capacity. Shoot what makes you happy and gives you the results you desire. It's that simple.
And film isn't going anywhere. Yeah, it may get a bit hard to find, and the variety may be less, but it will never be discontinued - at least not in our lifetimes.
-Tom