T, Kirk,
In a way I'd love to go back to film, but today I don't see that as possible for my work, even when we do an editorial and I shoot and process in one city.
it's just too much effort in the front end. I love the fact that with film, that film was kind of stupid. Once you zoned in on a film stock, you knew how it would react regardless of ambient colour bounce, but with digital, it just seems like it's always hit and miss and like T says, the back end on digital is a monster.
I'm amazed I can shoot 10 subjects on white and have to adjust skin tones (usually a lot) to stop casting, red in shadows, yellow in transitional areas, etc. etc.
You see it in cinema and television also. Watch someone set at a desk and drop their head. The brown (red) of the desk just throws their faces red in the medium shadows) and then they go back up to the key and they go yellow, because the colorist probably working on lack of time and budget had to make a middle of the road decision.
Film doesn't do this as much (it can), but digital, is too sensitive.
In fact the prettiest way to work digital is to desat the whole image and paint back the saturation where you want it. Slightly, but it does give more of a film impression.
IMO
BC