Digital BW, The Print

Just my feelings about this very important subject.

I am still using film and will for a long while I guess. At 
present if I had to go digital I would only go for a small pocketable 
camera.

- Film is a very mature technic it had never been as good.
- Film storage is easy and gives no hassle ; it seems that some 
museums make negatives out of digital files due to that.
- With a neg or a slide you have a picture in hand that you can see, 
no such thing with a digital file.
- Film forces you to think before you release the shutter.
- As someone said earlier in this thread, the pictures grow in you 
and the treatment is also part of my pleasure.
- The camera can be all mechanical, mature technic as well, no 
battery, it is very reliable and straight forward to use.

- Digital is just born, the equipment is obsolete within months, 
there is no second hand market ; we talk now of curved sensor for 
example.
- It is mainly electronics and that's very fragile, it sucks 
batteries within a whisper.
- It relies on computer technology forcing you to keep up with both.
- It is very easy to lost your files, they can get easily corrupted 
or erased.
- Nonetheless the actual results are promising.

I consider digital to be the typical consumer product, Snap, Look and 
Throw, you consume images. As an "amateur", for the reasons mentioned 
above, I will never deep in four figures $$$$ into a piece of 
electronic equipment, so I eliminate professionnal machines. 
And marketing doesn't help, when will we have just a simple camera, I 
don't want it to be a thermometer, clock, phone or coffee machine !
I may have one of these toys and use it as such until some of the 
inconvenients are in control then I will reconsider my opinion.

One final word, Mister Everybody who bought a digicam, will realise 
his mistake the day he will turn back and look for his souvenirs, 
there are many chances he won't have any, in return it was so easy to 
open a dusty shoebox and find everything in there.

Michel