Amateurs, if we would have been smart we would have stuck with film! Digital is much higher $$$. Pros would have shot large amounts of film and is different for.
Digital has and is still a huge mountain of knowledge to climb. Film was simpler.
The next step to me as I am doing now is combining them... which camera to use when? Well... that is same as which lens to use when, (or in film days different formats?), simply get to know which one we prefer for when and in what situations.
4x5 slides? What to do with digital shots? Slides are in many ways simpler to file for future. And will last better... no constant backup... conversions...
Analog and digital - its a comparison that will go on for some time. One way to look at them is in the learning curves: you can gradually move up the analog curve, and learn bit by bit, at your own pace. If you fall back, you still have all the accomplishments in your learning you had before. Imagine once you have mastered making a print, you learn each time to make a slightly better print, but the learning is incremental.
Contrast this with the learning curve for digital, and that curve is much more dramatic: it comes with particular moments of big gain. Mastering digital processing is not casually done - there are several places where you have to really apply concentration and think it through. Consider gamut and color theory - it existed before, but didn't impact our work that much. Now, its almost essential to understand color theory to do digital color work. How did that happen? Sometimes its enjoyable, sometimes rather difficult.... but its a different pace/organization than analog learning.
Same applies elsewhere: another place to see this is in design fields: hand drawing vs. CAD in the design fields . If you hand draw something by hand, and are interrupted, if you've organized the drawing correctly (guidelines, then "bringing it up graduallly") you still have a drawing. In the CAD world, until you have outputted it, you have nothing... in the early days, this used to drive people nuts (and still does - about 5% of architecture students fail to make our final review due to printing problems!), but is largely solved. On the other hand, for good looking work, fast, and the ability to make changes painlessly, nothing beats CAD. Both have their place.
Digital work flow has some spots where its "all or nothing". Its a subtle thing - as there are many other places where the digital world permits fine tuning and refinement far beyond the more mechanically oriented analog work flow. Imagines layers, curves, masks, channels, in the analog world - doable, but not easy. So in some realms, the digital is clearly superior work flow. But overall, the learning curves are different.
Film seemed simpler, and in some ways, for most of us it was. The same issues may have existed at the top of the field (for some), but we could ignore them and still be happy with our work. Now.... things are both richer, more available, and perhaps harder. Clearly different.
