I turn my back for 5 min. and I miss a very interesting discussion ! :-) I'm an enthousiatic digital cam user, having rediscovered photography after almost 20 years. I still remember those magical moments developing B/W pics in my fathers darkroom and -equally- remember the frustrating experience of developing colour pics in the same darkroom. The smell of the chemicals, the laboratory equipment, ... About 6 months ago, I finally decided to go for a digital camera and try to do something interesting with it. I had (and still have) to learn a lot about exposure, f-stops, white balance, ... while going from full-automatic to entirely manual operation of the camera. Am I playing ? Is my digital cam a toy ? Sure thing, I'm having a ball ! But the same would go for any traditional film cam I would have bought. In my view, this discussion is "only" about the technical aspect of our hobby/passion/profession; and doesn't even touch the essence, which is about what I call the "photographic eye" (composition, painting with light, conveying atmosphere, ...) In the hands of an experienced photographer, even a humble 2Mpix cam can produce pics that are far, far superior to the results i've seen from high-end SLR's. Technically, we can all see that digital is quite quickly overtaking traditional film in terms of quality and versatility. This has very little to do with the amount of Mpixels, but more with the quality (technology) of the CCD and the in-camera processing. Eventually, we'll get into a discussion similar to the one between audiophiles : CD or vynil record ? And yes, we tend to be protective of our investments (just read the discussions over at dpreview.com), we all want to think we have the best equipment (having invested thousands of $ or ), and we are very much set in our ways. I hope that in a couple of years I'll still be as enthousiastic with my camera as I am today and by that time, this whole discussion will have been settled comfourtably in favour of digital. Maybe with mixed feelings, but inevitably non the less...