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Originally Posted by jdb
I still think there has to be a clear winner...!
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They're both winners! It all depends on which one best suits what you want to do.
In my opinion film wins when it comes to absolute quality. A 4x5 large format camera (you can get much bigger!) for landscapes etc will easily produce over 100 flawless mega pixels and is cheaper than many DSLR's.
From an amateur point of view I think 35mm film is a better choice over a DSLR for many people, but it's a fine line. I only say that because the starting prices of DSLR's that match good 35mm film for image quality are so much higher than a 35mm SLR. But if the volume of work being done is high enough it can justify the expense of a DSLR, but the initial cost is still heaps more, but it’s getting cheaper all the time.
For the convenience factor, digital wins. Immediate feedback, no film to develop and taking a bad picture costs nothing.
I believe that there is no real overall winner in "film v digital", the real winner is the camera manufacturers, retailers and their marketing teams. They have managed to get almost everybody to drop their 35mm cameras in favour of what is often a less capable digital camera of some sort. My mum is a classic example of this. She has a Pentax 35mm SLR with auto everything, but she only ever used it when she was away on holidays a few times a year. Then she decided getting a digital camera that was less capable than her SLR was a good idea. It gets virtually no use - just like her Pentax. So what she should have done is used the camera she already had and not worried about the digi cam, it would have been the same as taking the next thousand photo's for free! The winner there is the camera retailer; they sold a camera that was never needed.
Above all, use what you’ve got and make up your own mind if it’s good enough for what you want to do!