I know this is a long post, but I encourage anyone interested in this topic to have a read of what I have to say.
You know the same thing is happening with guitars.
When digital photography was first introduced, people were ashamed to go near it. For a good 2 years, you were shunned if you used digital photography. It was seen as cheating, not true to the art and an imitation. Now look at it.
With guitars, every player cringes at the thought of a guitar with synths, effects and robotic tuning built into the guitar itself, even more so the 'Touch Pad' guitars that are currently being developed. "A guitar without strings is not a guitar and it won't play real music!" Is what people say, just like they did with digital photography. But eventually as with all things technological, people will start using these touch pad guitars, look at the advantages.. no broken stings, no tuning, effects and everything else built right into the guitar frame - how convenient. They will say to themselves that the result, the music sounds the same so why not embrace it.
People will start to forget about 'vintage' guitars and mock people who still use strings. But it is these people who have also forgotten something else, that in art, which photography and music both are, the process to getting the result is extremely important. It is just as important as any result you may achieve.
Photography is described as the only art form where skill, technique, intuition and experience does not lead to creating a 'better' photograph than one who lacks these. Realistically one cannot create a great guitar song by random, however one can take a great photograph at random because much of it comes back to luck and chance.
However, it is understanding why a photo is 'great' or not that separates the photographer from those who are not and also leads to creating 'better' photographs. And to understand a photo you must also understand the process in which the photo was created.
Digital photography is a process yes, but it is inherently very limiting as a photographic process, the medium of film however is much less limiting. Let me also make it clear also that photoshop is NOT a photographic process. Digital is a viable means of doing photography, I don't have a problem with it and if it is your chosen process then embrace it fully. However don't make any assumptions that the reason people use film is because they have simply not moved on with the times or do so to be different, some may yes but not all.
There is another reason being that film is physical. A minute magnetic symbol of binary code will honestly not stand the test of time unless it is carefully and periodically transferred between devices. More so, binary itself is not an image, software turns it into an image therefore without software it is nothing. Drop it in the water and it's gone, to much electricity and it's gone, computer stolen and it's gone and most importantly, left alone for to long and it will disappear. Digital photography is much more volatile to being lost or destroyed and most photographers nowadays don't consider this issue. We live in a 'now now now' society and that is why digital succeeds, but I fear that in the future even great photographs will no longer exist. Personally I started out seriously with digital, of the 1000s of photos I took, only 5 still exist. On the other hand, I still own every single roll of film I shot back to when I was 6 years old.
Stringed guitars are the only respected way of playing the guitar as of 2011. However lets say in 20 years, if 'touch pad' guitars have become the norm, I assure you that there will be a few, if only a niche market still using the classic strings. Why? Because perhaps these people understand that to create 'their' music they have to play it on stings, regardless if a touch pad guitar could make a similar sound. Because they have understood the process in their work.
Film photography is the same, I hope anyone reading can see some meaning in this.
