Greetings from your friendly neighborhood druid
I consider myself a raw novice when it comes to the technical aspects of digital. I have only used a cheap Polaroid snapshooter which died a few months after purchase and the flash card ceased to be manufactured. Larger volume cards wouldn't work in it and the cost of repair made it a throw away.
So I got a Sony Mavica which used floppies and did better work with easily acquired "film". Before long I had over 500 full disks cluttering the computer table. The problem being that, even with reformatting the floppies, some refused to again record images and a number of great photos were lost.
My fault that I didn't use the images for anything but personal memory storage. Like storing snapshots in a cigar box and finding them years later. Photographs should be displayed some way. Albums or slide shows.
So, like my 26 8X10 boxes of rolled 35mm negatives and 30+ notebooks of negative sheets, they languish on shelves awaiting the day I hunt for important images. (Goddess help!)
Anyway, when I lost so many photos because of camera shake, slow response time, lack of a viewfinder, ( you can only use the small rear screen to compose and in bright light that is damnnear impossible), I came close to giving up on photography until the wife told me to go ahead and get a Nikon D70. a brand that I trust with features that come close to a real camera.
The composition side translates easily. The processing is apples and oranges.
I have yet to find a computer program which will give me the results I could get from trays of smelly chemicals. It's the old fogy in me.
There is true magick in the darkroom. Processing film, making prints, all the hands on tricks I have learned in my many years of hobby and photojournalism. Progress, (?), and expense forced me to go digital.
To truly enjoy photography I would have to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear; when I could eyeball an exposure in next to nothing light, push ASA 400 film to 6400, capture images that would be impossible to mere mortals, and make double exposures, sandwich negatives, solarize film and prints, do do that voo doo that I do so well.
The wife said that I was so good that I could see a half naked girl-child sashaying down the street and know instantly the correct shutter speed and F-stop for a given film. I could too.
I don't think the same applies to electronic image making. I'm still learning so it is very possible that I am wrong.
What I miss the most is the ability to produce 16X20 and 20X24 prints suitable for exhibition.
I suspect that digital quality would disintegrate and the expense of a printer which could render an image that size would be more expensive than a darkroom with all the whistles and bells.
A question; are there any labs which can produce large prints from digital? What are the recording specs they require and how much does a quality print cost?