This post by Joerg at Conscientious was brought on by an email from me. It's well worth a read and not just because he agrees with me and I agree with him.

Digital Photography

But let's talk about actual photography a bit more. I think that third, digital cameras in a wide range of cases are a bad choice for people who're interested in creative photography. Provided you got a high-end model you can do pretty much everything you can do with a film camera - if you know how to do it. Some of the problems might be a little bit different but you really have to know lots of photographic techniques. But if you're interested in anything that's not run-of-the-mill you're in trouble. Yesterday, I looked at a website where somebody had taken moody b/w photos. They looked nice but somehow, they all looked very similar. And sure enough, they were taken digitally - using a normal colour photo, converting it into b/w, and doing the Photoshop on them. What's missing in digital photography is the kind of unpredictability that goes into a lot of photography. This is especially important if you're interested in stuff like toy camera or Polaroid photography. Also digital grain doesn't look like film grain. Digital technologies are too perfect. People are now getting back to using older or low resolution digital cameras to exploit the artefacts those cameras produce. That will be a whole new field of toy camera photography.

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It's not digital photography vs film photography. This is not an either/or situation. I'm moving back to film for most of what I want to shoot, but I'm not giving up my digital printing. It's what supports your vision. I also particularly like Joerg's comments on unpredictability. Here are some other very interesting thoughts on using digital cameras from the latest issue of Lenswork. Unfortunately, it's in a pdf file that is a preview of the current issue. On page 6...

Tool as Door