Quote Originally Posted by Franglais
Let's not forget that with "analogue" film you took the film into the store and it got put throgh a machine to make prints and theoretically them was a person running the machine who could correct errors that the machine couldn't detect, like light balance and wrong exposure. The negative film allows a fair amount of correction, particularly for overexposure and high-contrast situations

With digital you can just connect the camera to the computer and print straight out but there's no operator doing the quality control. You have to do it yourself. Plus if you make corrections to a JPG it quite quickly looks artificial. If the image is overexposed then there's not a lot you can do about it.

DSLR's have two advantages over digital point-and-shoots :

1. More sophisticated system overall for focussing, exposure and image treatment. Point-and-shoots are a compromise. DSLRs are the best
2. With a DSLR you can shoot RAW. As well as the treated JPG you get a file with the untreated image. With the right software you can go back on your PC and redo the treatment, correcting mistakes in light balance, exposure, contrast etc. to produce a new JPG which looks right. And you can do it as many times as you like.
Yeah but remember that most pro's shoot (or shot) slide film that doesn't offer anywhere near the same control as negative film. Good post-processing software (i.e. photoshop) can work with jpegs without making them artificial looking. RAW files offer only minor improvements visible in printed enlargements.