I agree with you Michael, for terrestrial shots, or art on a human scale, film is hard to beat. Especially when one uses a top-notch camera, lens, and generous film size- say 6x7cm & up. But for astrophotography, detector pixel resolution already matches or exceeds our telescope's resolving power. Add to that the ability of software to easily compensate for some tracking & focus problems, color & contrast, and it's easy to see why digital astro-photography has become so popular. That said, I think it's more satisfying to take the path that challenges. I still shoot astrophotos on film, guide by hand and eye, and will for as long as somebody makes and processes an appropriate emulsion. I've already started simple digital imaging and will probably employ both film and pixels for a long time to come. It need not be an "either/or" situation. --- Michael Carnes <michaelcarnes@earthlink.net> wrote:

Up until the last few years, my photography was purely casual. Then I bought a very good (for its day) digital camera and began to get more serious about what I was doing. Haven't really messed about with astro stuff--pretty strictly landscape for me. But as my knowledge has grown, I've appreciated film more and more. Even though film grain makes things more "interesting" on a microscopic scale, it's still got way better resolution that any digital camera I've seen. And the dynamic range is also considerably better. It takes me a lot of Photoshopping to get a digital photo to look anywhere close to a good film shot. I'll grab a new DSLR sometime over the next year or so, but it still takes $1500 of DSLR to get what I used to get with a $400 Pentax.

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