[font color=\'#000000\']I think that discussing other people's personal preferences (or what they may have been) is guesswork at best. Photography offers us a wide range of tools and techniques to express our vision and it only makes sense that different people will have different approaches that work best for them. I don't care much for those who preach any creative approach or set of tools as the one and only "right way".
So, in that context, here are my personal thoughts and you may agree or disagree with them as you please:
To me, creative photography starts with a vision and ends with a print, and those two extremes of the process are just about all that matters. What happens from one end to the other is not all that important - it's just a means of facilitating the transition from visualization to paper. Strange how this interim and unimportant step seems to take up the bulk of the discussion on most photography forums... but that's for another discussion
My guiding principle is - use the right tool for the right job. Keeping that in the back of my mind makes my choices pretty obvious (to me):
I photograph landscapes with the goal of making large prints. To me the role of a camera is to capture my vision with the utmost possible detail. The one purpose my camera serves is as a means of capturing what I find in the field, and effectively carrying it back with me to my "workshop" so I can make it into a print. That's it.
For good or bad, at this point in time the one tool that captures the most amount of detail in a form that is conducive to field work is a 4x5 view camera. Anything else will be a compromise.
Once I have a large piece of film containing what I found in the field, I find the next step to making a great color print is indeed digital. Tools like Photoshop allow me far greater control over the image than anything a chemical darkroom could, and the quality of Ultrachrome, Lightjet/Chromira etc. printers surpasses that of even the finest Ilfochrome. The choice here is obvious too - anything less than masterful image preparation in Photoshop towards a large digital print would be a compromise.
So, just thinking in terms of "horses for courses", I take the best of each technology available to me to produce prints that best represent my vision, and my choices are pretty obvious and independent of any marketing hype or religious debates.
Are these choices set in stone? of course not. Hopefully at some point digital technology will meet and/or surpass what the 4x5 camera gives me and at that point I will have no issue whatsoever with picking the best tool for the job once again.
Now take a step back and think about your own goals as a photographer - what do you want to capture and how do you want to express it? Who do you want to appreciate your work, and where/how do you want it displayed? Having a clear answer to these questions will define what you want to do. Once you know what you want, the choice of tools (and related skills to be learned) will become much more straightforward.
Just think of all the time you'll be saving in futile debates that you can now spend on honing your vision, dreaming up creative expressions, and of course - actually using your tools to make something meaningful.
My 2c...
Guy[/font]