> [Steve, I think you may be on to something here at least insofar as LCD projectors go. We have two fairly expensive ones at our office, each costing several thousand bucks, and they do a great job projecting graphics. When looked at in isolation, the digital photos we project with the, look okay to most audiences, mostly because they are training pictures, not intended as art, and the viewer really has no frame of reference from their chair. However, when I trot out 35mm transparancies and pop them into my Koday professional grade slide projector which I purchased new twenty years ago and project film images, any quality comparison is over, right then and there. As previously mentioned, this may be more a function of the state of projection technology than anything else, but the differences are real, as you say. You know, when I bought that projector in 1986, it cost me almost a thousand dollars, about four times what a "home grade" projector cost back then, and I thought it was pretty expensive, but it's still going stong and in weekly use two decades later. I guess it's true, quality does not cost, it pays.
As far as film versus digital cameras go, clearly the work shown here by pros like Marc Williams and DJ Garcia and others as well pretty much conclusively prove that with the proper knowledge and skill, and thoughtful selection of equipment, there is no doubt that digital photography can deliver the goods. If it could not, working pros wouldn't use it because for them, it's not a fad, it's their livelihood. In any event, I'd kill to be able to produce some of the work these guys do, with film or digital. For me, at the moment, I can get what I want by picking up the old film cameras and MF lenses that I already own, using a technology that I learned a long time ago and don't have to scratch my head over, and produce work that pleases me in my old-fashioned wet darkroom. That seems good enough for me right now, reserving my digicams for convenience shooting and work photos that need to be quickly posted.
Sooner or later I'll grab a DSLR and work some with it, and I'm sure that once I learn what I'm doing, the results will be fine. But, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of old dogs like me who are slow to learn new tricks, and if nothing else, we will keep buying film and it will remain on the market for a long time through a number of sources. I also believe that consumer level film cameras are probably dead from a sales standpoint, but obviously there is a brisk used market and all of those cameras will need film for a long time to come. So, like you, I get a little tired of hearing that film is dead. But as inaccurate as that statement might be, it does not mean that digital work is necessarily substandard.
Okay, the soapbox perch is now vacant once again.] >