My wife still likes film photography. We’re even thinking of setting up a dark room in the basement. Turns out it’s a huge PITA to find someone who knows how to repair a Mamya and, despite her best intentions, every photo she’s taken in the last decade has been digital.
As near as I can tell film photography and hand-written letters are things people do for fun. Both digital photography and modern printers can produce outputs that are are nearly indistinguishable from film or handwriting. I’ve been at weddings with Polaroids too. It’s fun but the pictures aren’t very good. The color is off, the resolution is low and they fade faster. The only advantage is that everyone gets to do a fun retro-thing. There’s nothing wrong with that, I have a lot of hobbies that involve doing things the old fashion way just because it’s more fun.
When we actually need the results to work well we generally go for the most modern technologies we can afford. When the main purpose is the enjoyment that accrues to the creator, there’s still a lot of room for older technologies.
That’s what I expect AI will eventually get to. Right now AI art is largely a novelty. Soon it will be the standard and creative artists will find interesting things to do with it that none of us are considering now.
