And i'm not sure I believe film and digital co-exist. Digital is a great lumbering behemoth dragging the carcasses of film behind it. I mean, sure, film is alive and digital is alive, but they aren't dancing through the meadows hand in hand. Digital is the death of film, and possibly rightly so for many reasons in the grand scheme of advancing our future. But it obviously is what it is, regardless, and not something I spend much time thinking about. I just go out and shoot film because I like film, and I like the cameras, and i like the processes involved, all the stuff I personally don't get from digital.
It's interesting, though, because they could be dancing through the meadows. I mean, a ton of us here have some kind of hybrid workflow: scanning negatives, producing inkspurts, etc. Even Leon was asking about the quality of prints from Flickr. How many paper negs actually end up with a positive print instead of a Photoshop flip? As I watch other people's workflows with DSLR shots of negs on lightboxes, printing transparencies for cyanotypes, even movies shot on HD and transferred to film, I think there's a whole lot of dancing out there already, and I think with the best of it people are trying to keep those aesthetic values that matter to them most and, hopefully, improve the experience by improving the consistency, saving some money, or avoiding some aspect they might find tedious.
And when I think about the likely and unlikely futures, I keep thinking where's the data back that stores the EXIF info in a QR glyph (or heck, even to SD) to improve the metadata in my scans? Where's the digital back that archives the data to film for long-term storage?
But some of this is still about the gear side, right? And sometimes we say it's the photographer and not the gear, but the gear affects the image, and even if it's just pacing or nostalgia the gear affects the photographer (and sometimes the subject, for all you LF portraitists), so I would say there's this amalgam of gear and photographer that develops a certain aesthetic aspect (that may be reproducible through alternate technology, current or future), and maybe it's like meditation or happiness or love and if we're lucky, we can find that place no matter what the circumstance, and if we're less lucky we tend and prune our environment until we can find that place again. So we plant the Polaroid seed to find the mindset that allows us to take the picture that circumnavigates the picture in our head, only because for some of us the Canon and the Photoshop make it harder to find.
And, a compelling image isn't always about DoF or perfect focus or outstanding exposure, and if we wanted those things every time it might be easier with the latest DSLR. Sometimes we want the serendipity that film and certain cameras can bring to the process. Sometimes we need something to compel us to take the time to consider our subject, or the light, or the composition. Sometimes we want aspects of the image to come forth and not be detracted by the DoF or focus or exposure.
Last, we're at our best when we develop a relationship with our tools, and it's hard to develop that relationship with a tool that we expect to leave us after the honeymoon.
