This talk of "digital rot" is nonsense bandied about by neophytes, cheapskates and toy collectors. Dare to buy what feels best and leave the rest to your muse.
+1
For what I enjoy, which is a pretty wide variety of color photography, there no advantage whatever to film. None.
OK 1 advantage. I like the M6 body better than the M9, in the hand. It's a bit lighter and smaller.
Some guys have a reasonable workflow with film, but "scanning" OMG for color, what a nightmare. Yes, it can be done. But it's crazy complex, with multiple software needed. I hate computers anyway (though I work and teach them), and the color film workflow does not attract me, that's for sure. I really don't care for BW in my own work, except when I have no other option. If your time is valuable, the price of working with color film is way over a used M240 or M9, shooting plenty over a year.
As to the great Salgado, he certainly won't touch 35mm film, as the quality is too low for him. It's medium format or digital. I quote a nice synopsis from 2010 by "alohakid"
"During one of the earlier interchanges, Salgado let it be known that he had switched to digital, which drew an audible gasp from some of the audience. He later on explained that he had used Leica at the beginning (both the legendary Leica M rangefinder and also the R6.2 SLR). When he was working on the previous project, “Africa”, he wanted to print big, so he switched to the medium format camera. He chose Pentax 645 because the low-contrast Pentax lens matched the characteristics of the Leica lens he used (he was probably using the earlier generation Leica lens and not the latest high-contrast sharp-as-tack ASPH generation).
For the current Genesis project, he needs to travel all over the world going through multiple countries and airports. His assistant would carry tens of pounds (I believe he said up to 50 pounds) of films, and being post 9-11, this got to be difficult as they requested hand checking of the film. He would carry documents from different agencies and a couple of times he had to call “people in high places” to straighten things out. With the 220 film, if it went through the X-Ray scanner more than 2-3 times, the quality degraded to less than 35mm level. So the assistant said they needed to do something about the situation.
One of his friends suggested that he try digital, which at first he resisted. However, he did try a medium format 645 back and was quite impressed by the quality. Since the medium format back setup was a bit large, he eventually settled on the Canon full frame (1Ds-something?). However, he still uses it like in the film days: his assistant makes contact sheets for him, and his camera is modified to give the same 645 ratio he is used to. He also has the images processed to look like Tri-X. For prints, a lab converts the data into a 645 negative and prints using traditional darkroom process!
He is excited by the promise of the new Leica S2, a camera system that is set to challenge medium format and full frame 35mm digital by having a sensor size bigger than 35mm and with 39 megapixel resolution, quality that will likely best any medium format digital with its peerless Leica glass, with better ergonomics to boot. He looks forward to possibly using Leica again.
His reference:
https://rfman.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/an-evening-with-sebastiao-salgado/
And here is Salgado in the flesh, last fall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alNAl20rNdI
I like clarity in much of my shooting (not that I'm so great LOL), so I'm not likely to shoot 135 film over the M9.
But film is cool, and more power to those who love it.
