My favorite thing about film shooting isn't the look of film, but rather how the camera works. Digital cameras have so much distracting/confusing crap on them. Reducing the world to just aperture and shutter speed, with a comfy cushion of exposure, really makes life more pleasant.
That said, I love auto-ISO to death. It's my favorite thing about digital photography. On film, you're either compromising shutter speed or compromising aperture to get the exposure. So nice to be able to easily adjust the third variable in the algebra.
Definitely agree on your point about slide exposure relative to black and white, too. Slide film is almost as fussy as digital. What's the fun of that?
I have fond memories of B&W darkroom work--including having to run into the darkroom after some event to develop negs, contact them, and then print them. Though I can't say I really miss it.
And I don't use auto-ISO but find being able to switch ISOs--including to rather high values--is one of the aspects of digital that is probably underappreciated.
But color slides, which is all I did latterly until digital came along, was mostly a sort of fussy way of capturing color images for reproduction and projection. Absent spending a lot of money and effort, you were pretty much stuck with what you captured, which may have a certain purity to it but could also be very frustrating.
I did somewhat obsess over different film stocks but that's sort of in the same bucket as playing with chemistry to push B&W film. Sort of a geek hobby but not really an end in itself at the end of the day.
I used to do a lot of dance performance photography, which is a real technical challenge - low light and fast motion. Being able to shoot 6400 ISO and still get a decent image was a lifesaver! But it was good to be able to auto-ISO to deal with varying light while keeping aperture and shutter consistent so I know what I'm getting.
> "... but rather how the camera works. Digital cameras have so much distracting/confusing crap on them."
One thing I always miss about the film days is the utter simplicity of film equipment vs. digital. Traveling was so much easier in the old days. In the carry-on just needed to pack a couple of camera bodies, a few lenses, stash of film and optionally, a flash. With digital it's necessary to keep track of a daunting armload of chargers, cables, spare batteries, SD cards as well as bodies, lenses and flash.
And of course, just about have to pack a computer to do something with the images, after all we paid for the capabilities and damn it, we're gonna use 'em.
That said, I love auto-ISO to death. It's my favorite thing about digital photography. On film, you're either compromising shutter speed or compromising aperture to get the exposure. So nice to be able to easily adjust the third variable in the algebra.
Definitely agree on your point about slide exposure relative to black and white, too. Slide film is almost as fussy as digital. What's the fun of that?