Is there anything a Digital camera can never replace in a Film camera?

A few years ago, people wondered whether they should go film or digital. Most of the reasons to go for film had to do with price, and the equipment you need.





But after a few years, it became clear that for the average person, there was very little reason to buy film cameras instead of digital ones. The only thing I can think of that a digital camera can't ever replace is that some film cameras don't need energy.





So aside from electricity to use it, is there any feature in film cameras that can never be replaced by digital cameras?|||At present, saturation characteristics of film versus digital. Film saturates in a friendly manner. Digital hard clips which causes noticeable color shifts in the saturated region. Who knows, technology may be able to reduce the saturation problems in digital camera in the future.





Film cameras need energy, but you can get by with energy from a spring.|||Each (film and digital) have unique qualities. One is not better than the other, that is decided by needs of a certain situation and/or a photographer's preference.





I have over 25 years experience and still love making a great print in the darkroom, but I have the ability of digital also.





Film cameras have an interesting twist, the choice of film and how it is processed can be sorta like changing DSLR cameras. I use to have a few very high resolution/low grain formulas that would be like easily stepping up to bigger sensor or at least a very noticeable increase in MP.





Difficult to verbalize.





Mark|||How about Leica M7 ? (digital Leica's just didn't get it !)





For me - It's more of a love when I load film and shoot on the streets ! It's the feel that makes the film wonderful.





( By the way, I still love the sound of LP's and tube-amplifiers though CD's and high quality solid state electronics have been around for a long time )|||To the average person, the advantage of film is non-existent. Take a picture of a white wedding gown in front of an equally white background. Film will easily show a continuous spectrum from light gray to white. Try getting that in digital.|||These days the best digital cameras pretty much match the quality of film. If you had a large format film camera though, the quality might still be better than digital if you plan on making giant posters.|||I like nikon D60|||Film|||I have experience making tens of thousands of photos on both. Ultimately with the latest high mega-pixel cameras using any regular film camera for me is a big waste of time. But this may depend upon how satisfied you are with the printer you have. And also may depend upon your eyesight. And if you are using a 16 mega-pixel camera which is about the equal to a 35mm the bigger issue may be storage. Today 35mm film can still be bought and developed. But I can save thousands of dollars by printing them myself, and I can afford to take many more photos where I would have to stop with a 35mm because the cost would be prohibitive. Now here is a trick that I have learned to match a photo to a HP color laser printer. Add the color profile in the printer properties under color management to AdobeRGB1998, Download and install the freeware called PDFCreator. Print your photo to a PDF file and print the PDF to the color printer. Inkjets usually have a crisp photo.|||I'm a film/video student, so I do not have much experience, though I have been studying/researching this specific topic a lot lately and I do know more than the average person outside of the industry. I also realize that you probably mean film camera as in analog photography and not actually a movie camera, but generally the technical stuff is the same(ish). So here's what I can say about that:





First of all, I don't know how it is for photography, but in movies film is actually much more expensive than video. In fact, most people would rather be shooting film than video but can't afford it.





Second, the dynamic range (the distance between the blackest black and whitest white on a graph) is much greater and the gamma curve steeper, in film.





Third, in film you have grain, in video/digital photography you have pixels. Grain is often an undesirable trait but pixels are much more so, since they do not have the organic quality that grain has.





Fourth, depth of field is generally much shallower in film. That is, the plane of focus is much smaller, meaning it is easier to set the focus on the subject and throw the background out of focus.





Lastly, film tends to have richer colors unlike video which usually looks sort of washed out, and is also usually softer/less sharp than video/digital.





Of course many of these things can be adjusted in post production/photoshop but not all. For example, the smaller dynamic range of video/digital makes it likelier that bright whites will get clipped and dark blacks will get pressed. In other words, past a certain point all shades of white or black will be compressed into the darkest/lightest color the camera can produce.





I'm sure some of what I said may not apply so much to photography, but I hope that helps. :-)