I'll be very honest here - I don't like digital photography very much. I don't like the way digital cameras render highlights in photographs. I don't like the feel of the focus ring on your typical digital SLR lens. I don't like the fact that few digital camera bodies are completely compatible with existing film lenses, or the fact that the popular save formats are often proprietary (RAW, etc.), and as such are subject to the whim and control of the manufacturers. I don't like the fact that the cameras themselves and the technology they employ will be superseded in only a few years' time, if that long, by something better. And I don't like the smug, superior air with which many people in camera shops, particularly in the small ones, sneer at requests for 35mm film stock. True, that last point isn't a direct fault of digital photography, it's a character fault on the part of the people working in those shops and on the part of a lot of digital photographers in general. They seem to think that because they have adopted the new way of doing things that the old way is no longer relevant or useful. After all, why would anyone bother?

This is exactly the kind of attitude that allows people to be manipulated by the media and by advertisers into feeling they are somehow lacking if they have yet to possess the latest and greatest thing (e.g., new car every two or three years, satellite radio, or a "modern" digital camera body). Only ten years ago, an amateur or semi-professional photographer would wax rhapsodic about his high quality, expensive film camera from a big name manufacturer, showing it off proudly to anyone who would pay attention, and bragging about the incredible photographs he was able to take with it and with his collection of camera lenses. Now that same camera is seen by the amateur or semi-pro as simply "yesterday's technology" when compared to an inferior digital camera body with a much higher price tag, and those lenses, unless the photographer uses Pentax cameras, are likely to be unsuited for use with the newer equipment without quite a bit of compensation for the peculiarities of the digital body. It isn't as if the film camera has suddenly ceased to be able to do all the things it could do before. It's that it is no longer seen as being relevant.

I've thought a lot about whether my disdain for digital photography is rooted in a real belief in the superiority of film, or if it is nothing more than a resistance to change and a fear that the techniques I've learned over the years for taking photographs are about to become or have already become obsolete. In truth, it is a bit of both. I genuinely dislike the look of most digital photographs. But then, I grew up with film and always took pictures with a film camera, and therefore that is the look that I and most other people have traditionally been accustomed to. Someone who has known no other way than digital or has been obsessed with her new digital toy or camera phone or her Myspace throwaways will have different (and often lower) standards. At a lot of live shows, I see photographers bumping about with expensive-looking digital cameras and long, digital telephoto lenses. When I see the results of these forays into numerical photography, I am most decidedly unimpressed. The grain is often absent, the highlights are too harsh, and the photos come across as having a coldness to them that lacks the warmth and softness of a good film shot. This is not always the fault of the photographer. At a live show, you have no control whatsoever over the lighting conditions, and only so much control over the composition of shots. But I see these effects even in photos taken under more ideal conditions with adequate lighting, without the distraction of spectators bumping about and with the people being photographed cheerily remaining put. I have seen a lot of black and white photos taken with digital SLR cameras that consist almost entirely of midtones, with no contrast to speak of. How much this is the fault of the photographer not knowing how to compose and shoot in black and white is debatable, though it is likely due at least in part to digital's reduced dynamic range compared with film.

What I don't like about digital photography:

Lack of contrast in black and white photos
This is a huge issue with me, as black and white is all about contrast. Film has a better dynamic range than digital. I have seen many many digital pictures taken in grayscale mode that consist of nothing but midtones, lacking the full range of tones from light to dark characteristic of a pleasing black and white photograph.

Imperfect backward compatibility with film lenses
Most digital camera bodies are not really designed to use existing film lenses. You can use them, but you will most likely end up with a cropped field of view and an increased depth of field over what the lenses are designed to deliver. You may also have to make exposure adjustments to compensate for the amount of light being delivered to the camera sensor.

Overly strong highlights
This is one of my very biggest complaints, and is a fault inherent in digital photography itself from the cheap camera phones right up to the several-thousand-dollar digital motion picture cameras. Digital photographs look unnaturally harsh, particularly when a flash is used, and have neither the naturally muted highlights of film stock nor its much wider exposure latitude. A slight mistake in exposure on a digital shot can completely wash out or eliminate details in the highlights and/or shadows, with no way whatever to recover them.

Proprietary image formats
Film is universal. Patented digital image formats are not, and there is no guarantee that a particular format will still be considered viable (and therefore be supported) years down the road.

Danger of accidentally deleting or otherwise losing copies of digital media
Film's longevity is subject to its handling and its preservation, naturally, and color negatives, especially those shot on Kodak film stock prior to the mid to late 1980's, are notorious for fading over time. But at least they are still physical media, with a physical existence in the real world. Digital photos are a series of ones and zeros stored on a disk, card, chip, or tape, and they can be accidentally erased or corrupted with no hope of recovery. A lot of people think that burning their photos to a DVD will guarantee their longevity, but they are wrong - the expected usable life span of a burned DVD before bit rot begins to set in is 3 to 4 years, I kid you not. For a pressed (manufactured) disc, this life span is much longer, but the fact remains that over time the reflectivity of all CD's and DVD's will begin to degrade, and the discs will become unplayable. I myself have two burned DVD's that were playable a year ago but which are now coasters, and they lay protected in their storage cases the entire time.

Lower than film quality
20 - 30 megapixels is the approximate quality level needed to approximate a good, optimally exposed black and white 35 mm film stock of ISO 50 - 100, shot with a good camera. A 10 Mpx camera (body only) can easily cost $1,000 or more, and it doesn't even come with a lens. Large format films, such as 4x5 and 8x10 sizes, can record the equivalent of hundreds of megapixels, though these formats are considerably more expensive to use and work with than 35 mm. This kind of resolution is not currently attainable with digital equipment.

Lack of impetus to improve quality at the consumer level
Film has had over 100 years of development and refinement. Ten years ago I didn't know a single person with a digital camera. The same 35 mm film can be used in a cheap throwaway camera or in a high quality, professional one. Since most people use digital cameras for snapshots, or for shooting photos to put online, the standard for quality isn't necessarily going to be too high, and therefore the impetus to produce equipment capable of reaching a higher standard may not be there, either. It will certainly be there at the professional level, but the motivation to introduce higher quality at the consumer level will be low. This is especially true for camera phones and pocket-sized point-and-shoot and disposable cameras. As they are used for snapshots and Myspace throwaways, and not for serious photography, the demand for higher quality in those areas simply doesn't exist.

Rapid obsolescence
What's new today is old tomorrow. . .it's the computer industry all over again. Photos taken with yesterday's digital cameras are obviously inferior to those taken with today's (camera phones and disposable cameras excepted). How much more pronounced will this difference be ten years from now?

Delayed response time
A digital camera requires time for the computer inside to lock focus, adjust settings, and record the image. Setting the camera to manual mode does not eliminate the requirement that the camera do this, though it will shorten the time by quite a bit if the focus is adjusted by the photographer instead of by the camera itself. On the other hand, the process of shooting film is entirely mechanical - the shutter opens, exposing the film, and then closes. All the other bells and whistles on a modern film SLR (autofocus, automatic flash adjustment, shutter operation, etc.) may be controlled by a miniature computer inside the camera body, but the actual exposure of the film is still a mechanical process. Strip away the bells and whistles, and you have a camera like the one I use, a 40 year old Mamiya/Sekor DTL1000 with all manual controls and no automatic anything (and no battery required, either). And no delay in firing. Granted, people who have never used manual cameras are probably not accustomed to this type of instantaneous response, but it definitely has its benefits when you're trying to shoot something like a live show, where a fraction of a second's delay could cost you the shot. Even the fastest digital SLR's I have tested still have a firing delay relative to my 40 year old Mamiya/Sekor DTL1000. They are very fast, but after five years with my film camera, I can still tell that that delay is there. On my DTL1000, when you depress the shutter button to shoot, the shutter fires immediately. There is no delay whatever. This feature will not be found on any digital camera that you or I are likely to use due to the cost of implementing it. The disadvantage of a manual camera, of course, is that it is impossible to incorporate features like autofocus, as autofocus necessarily introduces a delay to allow the sensor to lock focus before the image is recorded (which would completely counteract any advantage in response time).

Other potential artifacts
Moire effects, pixel noise, etc.

I have heard rationales for not using film that range from the absolutely sensible to the patently absurd:

"The chemicals used are toxic"
Granted, you probably wouldn't want to ingest a bottle of developer or fixing bath. But this statement came from someone in a camera store, who ten years ago would have waxed rhapsodic extolling the virtues of his own particular pet film, pet processing, pet photographic paper, etc. How quickly some people forget!

"Film is yesterday's technology"
Again, no argument there. Film is yesterday's technology. But then, so are television (with development dating back to the 1930's and earlier), VCR's (late 1970's), fax machines (first patented in 1843), compact discs (introduced in 1981, over a quarter century ago) and microwave ovens (first demonstrated in 1947). Every blockbuster ever shot in Hollywood was shot on film until very recently, and those which have made limited use of digital technology have still had the vast majority of footage shot on film stock (which, by the way, is also still used to archive movies). Times may change, but that isn't always a reason to throw out everything that came before, particularly when the equipment and infrastructure are already there for it, and replace it with a relatively immature and still buggy replacement that has not yet come of age.

"Digital looks better"
This is a matter of opinion, of course. I don't much care for the look of most digital photographs. Nevertheless, what one person finds unappealing, another may see as beautiful. In the matter of actual physical resolution, however, an empirical comparison can be made that does not depend solely on the eye of the beholder, and it is when looked at in this way that digital begins to look less attractive. Compared to 110 film (an obsolete format no longer supported in the market), digital clearly wins out, camera cell phones and super-cheap throwaway digital cameras excepted. But things are different for 35mm and larger formats. For slide film, the resolution needed to capture all the detail is even higher than for negative film. And as for larger size formats such as 4x5 and 8x10, there is no comparison at all; digital loses, and loses badly. However, these formats are very expensive to use and are most likely to be utilized by people in specialized fields such as art and landscape photography.

All this having been said, I have to be honest about something: one of the main reasons I haven't gone over to digital yet is cost. I simply don't have the money right now to invest all at one time in a good digital SLR, and I won't go digital until I can do this as I will not take a giant leap backward by using a point-and-shoot. I already have the film equipment, and it has worked well for me up until now. Despite all the gripes above, digital has a lot to be said for it: no more having to adjust my shooting and framing for the way the lab processes and prints (when I have rolls printed instead of just processed); no more having to go to special labs for push processing; no more having to give special instructions for processing and printing while being wary of lab people who think they know how to "improve" the look of photos counter to any instructions they may be given by the photographer (one of the most infuriating things is for someone else to decide how the colors or contrast need to be balanced, in spite of any instructions you give, which is why I only use certain places for film processing); no more having to shoot witin cetain tolerances (light, exposure, etc.) to deal with lab processing; no more having to stop and reload a new roll of film every 24 to 36 shots, no more accidentally double-exposed negatives; a lesser (though not zero) likelihood of having to do post-shoot color correction in Photoshop; and no more having to try to make each and every shot count due to the cost of film and the limited number of shots on each roll. The long term cost of shooting film, compared to digital, is enormous. And a lot more steps are involved in the whole process: load, shoot, unload, process, print, scan, and then correct; versus shoot, upload, and then correct. In the end, despite it all, shooting digital comes out cheaper, and in any event, it has already gotten more difficult to obtain the higher quality 35 mm film stocks. The market drives demand, and vice versa, and the manufacturers will give the public what it wants. For 99% of people playing photographer, that means the format that is cheapest, easiest, and most convenient for them. And that is most definitely digital. And I can't say that I blame them. Eventually, I will learn to adapt. Until then, I will continue to do things my way.