Film and digital capture are completely different media. They are used for similar purposes, but they themselves are completely unrelated to each other. I’d have an easier time and get in less trouble comparing my mom to a maid or my wife to something else than attempting a comparison of film to digital cameras. That said, here goes.

Most people get better results with digital cameras. I prefer the look of film. Film takes much more work. Extremely skilled photographers can get better results on film if they can complete the many more steps from shot to print all perfectly. Because there are so many ways things can go wrong with making prints from film, especially from print (negative) film, beginning photographers and hobbyists usually get better prints from digital because there are fewer variables to control.

I get my digital prints made at Costco and they look stunning. Mark the Costco bag “Print as-is. No corrections” and your prints will look like your screen, so long as you’ve left your camera in its default sRGB mode.

Labs usually make awful prints from film, which is why people who don’t print their work personally get better results from digital. I’ve never been happy with prints from negatives made for me by any lab regardless of cost. This is because prints from negatives are at the mercy of the eye of the person making the print. If you’re not making the prints yourself you usually get something completely different than you wanted, which means junk. That’s why most photographers shoot slide (transparency) film, since the printer can see exactly what the photographer intended.

Large format film still rules for serious landscape photography.

I use digital for people, fun shots and convenience. Digital replaced film in 1999 for big-city newspapers.

The biggest reason the results look different is the highlights. We’re used to the way film looks. It overloads gracefully when things get too light or wash out. This mimics our eye far better than digital. Digital’s weak point is that highlights abruptly clip and look horrible as soon as anything hits white. Unlike film there is no gradual overload to white. Digital cameras’ characteristic curve heads straight to 255 white and just crashes into the wall. it’s the same with video versus motion picture film. If any broad area like a forehead is overexposed your image looks like crap on digital. This effect is similar on cheap pocket cameras, my expensive Nikon D200 and $250,000 professional digital cinema cameras.

A smaller reason is that film, especially larger format film used in landscape photography, has more resolution. This becomes important as print size increases to wall size but invisible in 5 x 7″ prints.

IMDB has a nice, straightforward explanation of this. It’s interesting to note that 24fps was selected as the cinematic standard because it’s about as low a framerate you can go and still fool the brain.