One hassle people enjoy getting rid of are those boxes of negatives that have been in the closet for the last 20 years. Rather than add to the pile, all you have to do is store images on your computer (or burn a CD). The possiblity of reducing clutter makes a significant argument in favor of digital... or does it? When you get right down to it, you don't necessarily win with digital. The clutter doesn't go away - it just moves to a different location. There are also significant archival issues not currently addressed with digital, for both files and prints.
Everybody hates those piles of old photos and negatives, particularly since they seem to grow and grow if you shoot regularly, but moving to digital doesn't reduce the clutter as much as you might think. First, keep in mind that digital or film, you will always have prints to deal with. There will be some reduction as you may not print all you digital images, but you will still have prints in a pile. Next, you can burn to CD to save your images, but is that an ideal solution either? Instead of piles of negatives, you end up with piles of CD's (just as annoying to sort and store). Also, if you ever want to see images on a CD, you have to pop it into a computer and go through image by image in most cases (thumbnails which appear can often be useful for fast looks, but almost always aren't good enough to show enough of the actual image to show what's there). Compare this to those old film prints, where you can at least find the photo and negative you want just by looking at them.
So why not save your images on your hard drive? Then, there are no CD's to worry about. But you are then relying on your hard drive for long term storage, which is simply not advisable. Hard drives are specified to have a reliable storage life of only 5 years or so. After that much time of constant usage, they develop bad sectors and can lose data. But even before that, you could run into a system failure that wipes out your entire disk (and all your images with it). As a result, saving to the hard disk is not secure for the long haul (not to mention all the dozens of images that will clutter up your drive and take space). CD's aren't ideal either; you need to have good media that won't lose data. Not all CD-R media are created equal, and you need to have a good CD to burn on. Take a look at the following links:
Kodak Ultima 80 CD-R Media
Kodak Ultima CD-R Tests and Comparisons
While it is an advertisement for the Kodak CD's, the point is clear. Not all CD-R media perform well if not handled properly. Which brings up the ever-present annoyance with CD's - they scratch! So not only will you have to get good media, but you will have to be sure to be careful with them. If you aren't, you will have problems reading your files and potentially lose images. There's also the occasional issue of computer system changes, and the possibility we may go from CD's to another common format, as we moved from floppy disks to CD's in the early 1990's. The point? While a digital file will not degrade over time (a very significant advantage of digital over film!), current storage media are not necessarily ideal (and can have as many problems as the classic shoebox of negatives).
Even if you aren't concerned with the archival issues with digital files, there is also the problem of how long your print lasts. On a standard inkjet printer, you'll be lucky if your print lasts more than a few months before fading. While you can reprint the image, do you really want to reprint images (at a cost of $4 each) every 2-3 years just to keep it looking sharp? Even the so-called "photo-inks" don't offer lives over 25 years in many cases. Compare this to a film print on good paper (Kodak Royal, Fuji Crystal Archival, Kokak Duralife, etc) which has a rated life of 40-50 years. And if it fades? You can have it digitally restored! Currently, Epson is the only major printer manufacturer adressing this issue. They offer inks for some of their printers with archival lives that rival film, but some of the dyes for the long-term archival prints do not offer the same vibrancy of color from either a film print or inks with lower archival lives.
There are also problems even with the Epson archival inks; Lee Craker (a photographer I know who works extensively in digital) gave a print to a friend from an Epson 1280 printer. That friend left the print on his desk partially covered with a stack of papers for about 6 months. When the papers were removed, there was an obvious fade line, and the area that had been protected under the paper was more vibrant than the area exposed to the light. It should also be pointed out that the photo was not in direct sunlight, but kept under normal office lighting. How can this be? One troubling factor in inkjet printing today is that you must not only have the right inks, but you must also have the correct paper! Some papers will give you the full 25+ year archival life, while other papers will allow noticeable fading in less than 2 years (as Lee found). Unfortunately, there is very little data at this point about which inks work best with which papers, although some accelerated aging tests are now underway. So while improving, printer inks do not yet offer the archival life offered by film.
So are there any upsides to digital file storage? Certainly! The most significant advantage is that digital files do not degrade over time. Film will fade and shift in color, where digital files stay the same as the day they were shot. This is hands down the most exciting prospect for photographers, provided you pay attention to the media you use (as explained above). Digital files are also very easy to transfer. Small files can be sent through e-mail, while large files can be burned to CD and sent for relatively low cost through regular mail. Also, while film prints currently have the archival advantage, the fact remains that you can reprint digital files at any time, and they will be the same quality as the original print (provided you keep your systems calibrated ;-). So when you get right down to it, both digital and film have reasonable archival expectations. The only major difference is that the film issues are well documented, where the digital issues are not. Personally, I still give the edge to film for long term storage as it currently offers better storage life in the print, and if need be, can be digitally restored to new.
Believe it or not, this just about covers all the basics of digital you usually can't get from salespeople (who, in most cases, aren't trained in much more than the buzzwords and feature lists of the cameras they sell). The next section covers a few additional items regarding quality, and then it's on to getting the most out of digital.
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