You can make digital look like almost anything you want, if you know what you want. (But, your probably going to have to throw a little of the shadow detail away if you want a digital print to look like a silver print - and that’s understandably hard for most folks.)
I am going to jump back in here after two days, because no one has really challenged this, though there has been some muted agreement, or acquiesence. If it were true that, as is implied here, you can have all the advantages of shooting digital plus being able to make any digital image look like a film image if and whenever you wanted to, this changes the entire nature of the discussion. If that were true, there would be no reason pertaining to quality to shoot film. Film would be reduced to nothing more than the province of a somewhat sad bunch of nostalgic camera fondlers and earnest hipsters if it were true that you could really duplicate, day in and day out, the results of film from a digital file. If that were the case, the original question "Why do you shoot film?" isn't so much questioning your reasons as it is questioning your sanity. Because going through the hassles and expense of shooting film, if you could achieve the same exact quality using digital capture, would be, frankly, crazy.
My contention is that you cannot reliably duplicate the look of film by manipulating digital files, that there is an unduplicatable qualitative difference to film, thus there is a reason to shoot film if one likes the look; it's more than just "the experience".
Instead of my writing out one of the technical reasons for this, this link might prove helpful:
http://leicaphilia.com/the-difference-between-black-and-white-digital-and-film-explained/
As a related aside, using the most recent iteration of Fuji's ACROS film simulation preset on the X-PRO 2 as an example. I shoot a fair amount of ACROS, developed in Fuji's own recommended Microfine as well as a lot of other things. The results I have gotten using the ACROS mode with an X-PRO 2, don't look like anything I can get using actual ACROS. Not really. Am supposing the preset knocks down the red sensitivity and bumps up the yellow green sensitivity, but that's not enough, because sensors and film register photons inherently differently. Information not captured on the sensor due to it's linear response, cannot be put back into the file in Photoshop later, because it was never there in the first place.
Please understand, I am not saying film is "better" than digital. If someone prefers the look of one to the other, that's their business and they should be free to use what they prefer on its esthetic merits without hectoring from the other "side". What I am saying is that it might be a mistake to think that you can reliably duplicate the look and feel of something shot on film by manipulating a digital file. There are factual reasons why "you can't get there from here..", and there are valid esthetic reasons to shoot film over and beyond the nostalgic or tactile experience of the process itself. To some people it just looks better, to others it doesn't. C'est la vie.
