I used film for at least 20 years... loved photography, but could never justify the cost of really getting involved - purely the film & developing costs... I won a digital camera in 1998 - it took a 320 X 200 pixel image, and by todays standards was a toy - back then, it was worth over $600 - I took a few shots, and stuck it in a cupboard as it simply couldn't equal 35mm quality...
It got dragged out when my first daughter was born in 2000... the images were still tiny, but they were instant... that lasted until she started crawling, and found that digital cameras made good hammers... rapid succession through a range of cheapies took me quickly to a Canon Powershot G2 - in the first year with that camera, I took 10,000 photos (that's 277 films worth - or $25,000 worth of film and processing)... I printed a good 10% of those, at around 50c a print...
Early this year, I had an offer to shoot some commercial work, which could pay for an upgrade (all my photography has been self funded... sales and competition wins have paid for the equipment, including a Canon S9000 for printing enlargements, etc), so I went up to a Canon Eos 10D, and have been steadily adding lenses... the photographic 'hobby' is starting to make some nice money for me now - the skills I've picked up from really using the cameras rather than only taking the odd shot have made a huge difference to photography for me...
And interesting fact popped up at a recent product launch though - 80% of digital camera owners have never printed one picture... images get shared on the web now more than they do physically!
I'd love to share some of my work with you - but until I've posted a bit more I can't even give you a link - although there is a link to one of my albums in my profile...
Cheers,
Stuart