Oh I think that the advent of digital vastly improved many people's photography, including mine. And the reason is the immediate feedback it offers: you know right away if you need a "do-over". You can also immediately view and critique your own work and improve it on the spot. Also, given that more images do not cost you money (as it did with film), you can bang away to your heart's content, bracketing, using different compositions and angles, etc. Also, image processing programs offer more options, (although I for one prefer to capture the image I want with as little or no adjustment needed in the computer).

Now, did everybody's photography improve? Well, no. Just look at all the folks you see with their little point and shoots who flash away (with the subject at a great distance). They would do this with film; they do this with digital. They would do this with a box Brownie. Oh well.

I do still shoot now and again with a medium format camera and scan the negatives which I have developed by a local photoshop. (I could do it myself---and may later on---just don't have the patience for it right now!) And I must say that for whopping enlargements, nothing beats it. (But I haven't seen a full frame/35mm digital enlargement: I am told this quite does the trick in terms of quality.)

[quote=Patrick;bt527]These days slide projection is very rare, in fact it probably only exists at club level, side by side with digital. Our club and most other clubs in this area do only digital projection these days. On the exhibition circuit the projected images also tend to be all digital.
Patrick[/quote]

We had our AGM last night and it was decided to keep slides in for another year even though submissions had dropped by 50%. The Intermediate Group will no doubt just fade away, as their were only 2 members and one has been promoted to Advanced.
Colour prints dropped by 10%; Mono prints by 39%; DPI were up by 2%. Of course most if not all the prints were from digital files. I don't know anyone in the Club still using film.

One of the factors that got me interested in photography back when I was a kid were the clich�d family slide shows at home. I used to love getting the old slide projector out (just a simple push-pull slide carrier model) and the big roll-up screen on a tripod stand). The burning aroma of dust on the hot lamp was a sign that we were alll in for a wondrous evening watching my father's half frame slides.

Later I invested in a Braun Paximat carousel slide projector, but I do recall that the old family projector had amazing quality. Very vivid colours. I suppose it was the Plasma TV of its day :)

Ian