>>4012601>In my opinion..just because the digital shot has data doesn't mean photographer is going to use that or initially know what each part of that data contributed to the shotI think you misunderstood what he was saying.
We're talking about someone wanting to learn photography. So, at a minimum, someone who's said to themselves "Huh, what does this M A S P dial do?". It takes just a few minutes to get a basic explanation of what the exposure triangle does--I've typed it out here on /p/ several times, and explained it to several friends interested in getting into photography over the course of a meal.
Having the shot data won't help you if you don't have that basic understanding, but if you *do*, then the ability to play around and try out different settings is a huge help. With digital, you can put it in aperture-priority, take a shot at f/1.8, take the same shot at f/8, and immediately see what that does to your image. With film, even if you're lucky enough to still live in a city with a place that'll do one-hour developing, you have to wait until you finish off the roll, drive to the lab, fill out the form, pay money, wait an hour, and get your prints back before you can see what effect your test shots have. Want to do more than 36 test photos? Gonna cost you twice as much and take you another hour.
So yeah, a film photographer *can* take notes and compare their settings to the final images. But a digital photographer doesn't need to, because the results are immediately visible on the back LCD and the marginal cost to try different settings out is effectively nil.
