Pixiq

There are digital cameras that approximate your description of film cameras. Most of my digital work is shot with a Leica M8, and I have no idea what any of this means "P, Av, Tv, Sv, TAv." Whatever it means I'm sure it's good, but it's not necessary for digital photography.

What a silly comparison. You could insert just as much on the film side of things.

Take camera, open film canister, open back of camera, insert canister, pull tab, spend a minute carefully hooking it on the little advance prongs, remove lens cap, choose mode, continuous or singular focusing?, continuous or singular shutter?, set aperture, press depth of field preview button to see if you like it, set shutter speed, realize you can't use the shutter you want because you packed in high ISO film, screw on colored CTO filter to compensate for the lighting, read light meter, flash or no flash?, choose focus point, take picture, adjust shutter speed, take picture again in case exposure was off on the last one, go to lab, rewind film to canister, take canister out, go in dark darkroom, use can opener to open the canister, try to hook it on reel, spend a long time reeling the film up, put in a light sealed container, go to chemicals, look up developing time for your film, look up stop bath time for your film, look up fixer time for your film, realize your chemicals are almost empty and prepare some more (THAT'S ANOTHER 20 STEPS), pour developer into container, spend 10 minutes agitating, drain developer, pour in stop bath, spend more time agitating, drain stop bath, pour in fixer, spend more time agitating, drain fixer, rinse film thoroughly, put film up to dry, wait a while, carefully cut film into small strips, go to darkroom, load negative into enlarger, turn on enlarger, adjust focus on enlarger, adjust frame size of enlarger, adjust focus again because you changed the size, unpack photo paper, cut a small strip of photo paper off, block sections of the strip and expose it, block sections of the strip and expose it, block sections of the strip and expose it, good job now you have a test strip, go in the light and examine strip, pick a favorite exposure length, go back in darkroom and insert contrast filter because you think it needs it, block sections of the strip and expose it, block sections of the strip and expose it, pick another favorite exposure because of your contrast filter, put down photographic paper, expose the photographic paper, agitate paper in developer, agitate paper in stop bath, agitate paper in fixer, rinse paper, put paper up to dry, take out your paper. The decisive moment, a great image captured!

Now you have one image from a film camera. One. I left out how complicated a studio set would get if you need to use light meters combined with flashes (that's a few pages of writing?) or if you want to burn your final image. I also left out how much fun it is you clean your negatives because some dust crept in while you were drying. Or hell, maybe your picture didn't come out at all since film doesn't exactly give you a histogram.

It's cool if you like film, but don't make up straw man arguments. And before you say "but darkroom work doesn't count!" I'd like to point out three things:
1. The list for film is already as long as the list for digital minus the darkroom.
2. Darkroom work is a part of getting an image in film but not in digital. Furthermore it's a process which can very easily lose your picture. It's a part of the picture and that's that, especially if you want to adjust how it looks as digital shooters do.
3. You included some post-processing steps on your digital list, which is the equivalent of darkroom work for digital. Fair is fair.

But I do see where you're going with this, I just think you're approaching it from the wrong direction. Retitle the article "I don't like computers" and be done with it.

This article is complete crap.. It is totally film bias I think you left out a TON of "cons" about film and really really trashed Digital. The age of digital has already taken over, and millions can stand with me to say that is the most efficient way of photography.. Don't get left in the dust

John, I've read both your articles and as a photographer for over 50 years I've made hundreds of thousands of photos on film and less than 50,000 on digital. Film and digital have different "looks" and what looks right one may not look right for the other. I can say I agree with you 100%, great articles!

Over the past few days I've been going through all my film cameras and darkroom equipment trying to decide what to keep and what to sell. I'll keep one enlarger and some processing equipment, a Minolta Maxxum film camera and one Minolta MF camera along with a set of lenses for each. I'm using a Sony a300 DSLR and all the Maxxum lenses fit it. I've got a 60+ year old 4x5 Speed Graphic which I'll sell. I was thinking about selling my Kiev 88 MF system but now after reading what you've said, I"ll keep it and start using it again every now and then. I used the Kiev for making hundreds H.S. senior portraits and dozens of weddings from 1995 to 2005 and it still works very well. It's worth very little on the used camera market but even so the 30mm fisheye lens is outstanding and worth keeping just for that alone.