I don't like the "would've been" speculative talks, but logically...
I'd never considered Adams a true artist but rather an artistic technician. Quality DID matter to him, despite what people say - he didn't do any artificial studio-shootouts with artistic subjects, he shot a lot of natural landscape, architecture and objects. He'd shoot 35mm only if quality didn't matter for him and only the creativity part. But he shot mostly 8x10" and some medium format. His spotmetering + zone system, adjusted development & matched paper grade printing is a sign of a true technical wizard at his time, IMO.
Agreed he'd probably WOULD be a proponent of the digital in the beginning, like most of us, since it's a "new thing" and most of us are fascinated about new trends and technologies to get our dreams going. We all dream of going to Mars as well, despite what awaits us there in the beginning, it's still very fascinating.
BUT when it finally comes, a daily reality after some years with digital, seeing it doesn't match his 8x10" nowhere near quality-wise plus 99.9% of photographers would shoot digital by then and Photoshop/Lightroom the crap out of their images making all this digital manipulations "too common", and tired of choosing from enldless amount of digital photos from one subject Ansel would probably switch back to 8x10" film - just to be different again and back to the medium he knows throughout, one shot per one subject and it's almost always perfectly matched and technically solid. Keep it simple and real - that's where the creativity comes.
Under a very talented jazz artist a high-end Digital Piano never sounds as good as an old-fashioned acoustic Grand Piano despite digital piano has much better technical specifications, digital modulations, digital MIDI capability etc, that supposed to make it very "creative-tool". In fact often it's the "limitations" (or should we redifine them "nuances") that inspire one into creativity.
All IMHO of course.
