It's been interesting reading this thread and seeing such commonality.
Myself, I did commercial work for years, 90% E6. Only tried to process E6 once... came out good but too much hassle with 3 pro labs in town (Dallas is down to one now I believe...) Then came digital, which, for business, I love.
What I don't love is how "everyone's a commercial shooter" now, "just look at the LCD" - film really separated the men from the boys and I can't imagine a lot of the younger generation trying to sleep while waiting on snip tests from a very expensive shoot -no matter how prepared I was and how good the polaroids looked, it was always a bit nerve wracking. Then again, digital has allowed a lot of people to quickly understand exposure.
I do a lot of design work and web work, and the quality of supplied photography I get is often pretty abysmal. But I suppose the world of photography has been opened up to people with a good eye, who may have never gotten into it without the ease of digital. You can throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, essentially for free, and there's some good creativity coming out of that.
That said, as a commercial guy, I never messed with the Zone system and negative exposure and developing precision, dialing in a film was much more about correct product colors and clean whites. Returning to B&W and really trying to do it right and learn from many of the giant talents posting here - I do feel like I'm 20 again as far as the sense of a wide-open world of possibilities. And that feels very cool!
