But I found myself ‘snapping piccies’ by the hundred, piccies that were deleted later when I looked over them, wondering, ‘Why did I take that one?’

I have rarely found myself thinking that with my film cameras over the years.

Then, a year after the guarentee ran out, the pictures became steaky, then disappeared totally, I was facing a black screen. To find out what was wrong with it would cost more than what it’s current worth was, so it’s been in a box somewhere ever since.

I decided ‘never again’.

Mechanical film cameras are far more reliable, I’ve virtually always bought very secondhand and despite this have never had a fault, let alone a bad photo (other than my cacky-handed, cross-eyed, total balls-ups). I found I could buy film cameras for a song, as people dumped them for digital, and now have a small collection of 35mm and large format (Mamiya C330 and rb67). I also have cameras dependant on batteries, but apart from those that use the small silver-oxide SR44′s for the lightmeters (my OM10 and EM’s need the batteries to operate, but they are common and very cheap nowerdays) I try and get ones that use AA, AAA, or still-available lithium batteries (Canon Prima Zoom). I must admit to being impressed by the point-and-shoot automatics from the 80′s-’90′s, I always have my Olympus AF10 Super with me, I can – and have – pulled it out of my pocket and ripped-off a few shots as quick as any wild-west gunslinger, to get very good photos (of an accident). The police were pleased to get the film, not a memory-card, as they have bad experiences of such cards and the 35mm film blows up to produce a photo far bigger and with retained resolution a digital simply can’t match.

Yes, developing and producing a photo uses messy chemicals, but in the last years they had machines to do that, slip-in the exposed neg in one end and the developed neg and the photos came out the other after 5 minutes. Even a pro can use those machines, you could manually alter the settings if you needed to fiddle with the neg’s development etc.

Development of the digital camera is soon at an end. There is a limit how many pixels a sensor can hold, and we are very close to that now, if not there. The only way forward is larger sensors, which mean prices will soar, as the processors, batteries etc., have to be upgraded to match, and we are looking at consumer cameras now perilously close to very expensive pro-cameras. And who can afford to buy them then?

I think the wheel will turn the whole way and the future is electronic film cameras using the latest micro-processor technology, backed-up by very sophisticated and compact home-development units for the films, no bigger than the average laser-printers we have. We already have home printing units for photos.

I think the mentality that it’s always a good idea to take the shot, shows an insecurity about your end product, your basically implying that you don’t know what is good so you shoot everything in hopes that you’ll get something in the end. It’s a shoot down the craps table and it doesn’t need to be that way.

Shooting with a format that has such a beautiful end product and a versatile way of printing really opens up the possibilities of the medium of photography. Your not stuck with a digital censor, your free to shoot whatever film or imaging medium you want. You can put a censor on a large format camera but you can’t put film in a digital camera.

I think my rant focuses towards the art students more so than the digital affecianadoes, but hopefully it broadens your perspective on the topic.

Sorry these are my opinions I wanted to share with you.
Feel free to visit my photos at http://www.flickr.com/martix
(sorry no professional photos, im just an enthusiast)