some illustration...
the girls, my wife actually, shot with Olga, scanned with a crappy stuff, just for archive like contact... nothing to do at all with digital... but hell I like the mood of it.
the guy, shot with Pentax 67 - 90mm - scanned with the same hardware...
When I see these film to digital conversations they are never apples to apples, heck they're not even apples to oranges.
Somebody posts a grainy holga shot (which I like) or a nc100 hasselblad square image pushed two stops in the bright sunlight and says film has the look that digital doesn't. On the other hand the next thread will be about somebody comparing at 200% a Nikon D3, vs a D3x, vs, a P45, etc. saying nothing shows detail and smoothness like the (you can fill in the blanks here).
Basically we have two standards for image capture. With film we talk about romance, the "look" feel and texture that only film can deliver and with digital everyone compares detail, smoothness, lack of artifacts.
I've shot digital for a long time now and honestly the most film like looks I get from digital come from the smaller megapixel cameras, the original canon 1ds, the p21, Aptus 22, Leica M8 (processed in photoshop) because they weren't overly smooth and do have artifacts, especailly when pushed pass their standard low iso.
I don't have a lot of pixel conversations with clients anymore and actually when presenting to a new AD or client, the images they are positive are shot with film are the cameras I mentioned above, the images they are positive are digital are the 1ds3 and the p30+, because at their intended iso they are smoother, have less grit and though at 200% on a monitor may seem technically superior they lose some of the romance of the older digital cameras and probably film.
This image was shot with a 1ds1, used tungsten, screwed up the blue channels and shot on it's iso limit and to a client, they say, oh yea, that's film.
Now saying that if I shoot a cosmetic ad or an large in-store poster I'll probably shoot the highest megapixel camera I own, just because somewhere deep in my brain I get that thought of pixels do matter, but in reality I think the overly smooth, overly detailed look does lose some romance.
I do know that scene, lighting dependent that digital reacts differently than "some" films. An open lit room with a yellowed wood floor will kick up a monotone overly yellow look that much more noticeable than film, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.
It doesn't mean that digital can't look or mimick any film, it just means that with film we had a starting point that was preset by the film maker and with digital we have a roll your own look.
But with film we did accept things that we never would with digital. Noise( grain clumps) in shadows and blue skies were normal, even in larger formats, skin tones that changed color were also the norm, we just assumed that is the way film was so we let it go. We hold digital to a much higher standard than film and usually those standards have nothing to do with art of the photograph, just the technical details.
At some stage you just have to drop back and think, it really doesn't matter if I have 20 more mpx. or .7 of a stop more dr. It's just the final image that matters and overly detailed, overly smooth and sharp will get more comments of "oh it's digital", than something with texture, collapsed shadows and some blow out in the highlights.
It's funny when I shoot for myself, it's usually with cameras that don't have more than 18mpx (if that) though when it's commercial work, I shoot at the highest pixel count possible, though it's usually the personal work that gets us booked.
So film vs. digital. Except in a few instances I don't see a difference as long as I take the thought of more megapixels out of my head.