Do I still get to give an on-topic answer though? :mrgreen:
Sticking with film... as much as this is going to hurt film shooters... that is a dead horse. No one is developing new advancements for film cameras and less and less places are even processing and developing film. The die-hards are still using it, and good for them, for preserving the past, but in today's digital society, it is foolish to think that you can learn faster and better or as easily do photography as with digital.
Developing costs and prints/CDs cost money too... and if you are like me... even time is money. For me, film would come out more expensive than digital. If I were a film only buff, with 2 years experience, I still would be learning the basics due to time constraints. I'd also be in the poor house becuase of the developing costs and up to my ears in prints... lol
You may say film is cheaper... I disagree. It would be if you take 500-1000 pictures a year on an old film dSLR, but I do triplr that on an average week, and then there are the obvious advantages such as being able to see your results NOW, not needing to send the roll off to a lab, pray that they don't screw up your roll and wait days to learn if how you were shooting was good or not.
With respect to film shooters... film is pretty much a thing of the past and dying out more each day.
1) Your viewpoint is that of a high-volume professional. For professionals, I don't disagree that using digital can be a huge time and money saver.
2) I also don't deny that digital is better for newbies, because of the instant feedback.
And here's the rub - the OP doesn't mention that he's a professional (and if he's been using an F80 - he's not), and if he's "used Nikon SLRs for many years" then he's certainly not a newbie. He appears to be, like me, a low-volume hobbyist shooter, who will occasionally go out on the weekend and shoot (in his case, some landscapes). He doesn't need instant feedback, because he's become somewhat familiar with exposure from his film use over the years - flash lighting can be checked with a cheap DSLR for exposure before committing to film.
So lets look at how film applies well to these different groups of people:
In terms of the processing - a professional does need to drop it off, because the few hours involved developing and printing could be spent shooting or otherwise making money. High volume shooters need to drop it off, because hell - I know I couldn't be bothered to develop several if not dozens of rolls per week. But for the low-volume hobbyist, home processing can lend great results and a sense of empowerment.
In response to "no one is developing new advancements for film cameras," I'd make the claim that it's because they've been perfected :mrgreen: but seriously, what kind of new advancements are really made for DSLR's these days? A denser image, better image processing in-camera? Video? How many of these really even theoretically apply to a film body? They apply, maybe, to the film stock itself - and many of the major film stock manufacturers like Kodak and Fuji have gone back and made advancements and rereleased a lot of their film lines. For the film hobbyist, there's really only a few things that can be seen as good features for a film body - you want a good camera build (ergonomic as well), and then some combination of full manual controls, a good meter, or more electronic options. What else COULD you do to a film body?
And film isn't about "preserving the past" - its about getting a better result than digital. So called die-hards are more purists than anything else. For the perspective of a professional who switched back, see:
The Visual Science Lab: Everything old is new again.....Photography 180.
TL: DR - Just because you're a professional Jerry, doesn't mean everyone is or will become one. Just because film doesn't work for how you shoot, doesn't mean it won't work for how someone else (i.e. the OP) shoots.
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