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Snuffy Smiff wrote:

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I guess all photographic film is going to go away before long.

Nope. There are still tangible benefits to print photography, although they are very niche. For instance, shooting with a DSLR, uploading the shots onto your comp, applying grayscale or desaturation to the photo, and then reprinting the photo is nowhere near the same as an actual film print. For this reason, artists who do print photography in b/w generally do better than artists that do their photography with a DSLR. Also, medium- and large-format films still provide a small market for photo afficionados. In essence, the only reason that film won't die out is because of artists who shoot photos for general resale instead of for contract jobs. The quality in the final print tends to be more in sync with what a collector is looking for as opposed to a print from a printer, whereas contract photographers tend to shoot photos en masse and then have the client (or they themselves) choose from a vast print set. Now this only applies to b/w photography -- for many reasons (some obvious, some not), color photography has transcended film and probably will never go back.

I also know many people who have considered developing your own photos one of those essential "life-skills" that everyone should at least learn about and attempt once in their lives.

I've found university art departments usually have one old eccentric who refuses to switch over and knows his/her stuff.

I do understand the eccentrics part, as many art departments culled their photo staffs in lieu of outside lecturers that do not have tenure-track positions (think of grad students teaching a course, only these are people that have their own studios and photography businesses). As a result, there is almost always someone in the photo labs, usually the lab manager, who knows almost everything about film development and films, while people with skills on everything else related to photography are located outside the university.