Hi Michael,
The short answer is, it does not matter, do what you want to do.
The original, film and how you worked with it to get to this image is not digital, it is film. I presume you shoot film because of the journey it allows you, the lack of digital distraction and the fact you have a photographic object that does not necessarily need a computer to be viewed.
Let me qualify this a bit as this is the first time I have posted here and did not know that there was even a photography section on a "Mac Rumors" site. I am 42 years old, been shooting with film since age 9, been shooting with digital for 16 years, I have been a full time photographer for over 20 years and no, I do not do weddings, iStock or Flickr. I have had my photographs run on the cover of Time, National Geographic Adventure and had an essay in Life, The Year In Pictures just to touch upon it all.
When I would get a drum scan of my film, it was photography, not digital photography. If you are tricking out your photos in photoshop that were scanned, then it is really more like digital photography. I just got done doing some scans tonight for a long term project I am going to be working on the entirety of 2010. My workflow is that I get the scans as close to the original slide as possible, I either got it in the field, or I did not get it, no faking it out in photoshop. My scanning workflow is super easy now, but I only do it for publications, not for prints.
To put this in perspective, I have a great digital workflow, but at this stage in my career and in looking at what the masses are doing, I am getting out of digital. It is not my kind of photography and I get just as good of results if not better in using film. One of the reasons is that I like the medium better, I like not being distracted by a computer screen on the back of a camera and I have something that is lasting. In terms of quality, I get sharper images with a Leica Aspheric lens in front of the right film than I do with digital. Add to that my darkroom only medium and large format prints get up to 10 times the price a digital one does and it is a no brainer for me. So it has all evened out, film is the new / niche thing and digital is just the same old thing at this point.
I applaud you for using film, being different. Once you make the decision to do something like this, then you can not listen to what others have to say if they are casting doubt about your reasons, why be like them? Why be like every other digital fanatic? Why do one more darn thing on a device that you pay your bills on, read your mail on, play games on, it is really nothing special at this point and when one looks at the photography done in the past 50 years, digital has improved upon it very little if at all…..most of it is terrible, photoshopped nonsense with no long term social value.
I make a wonderful living in photography, I get to travel, do exciting things like climb and ski, but I am rewarding my self by taking on projects that get me away from digital, away from the computer and back into the real world. And my clients? Dude, they love it, they are SO over the digital hype that walks through their doors on a daily basis. I even sold two of my three digital bodies in the past month. I have a full darkroom, thousands of rolls of film, including rare stocks like Techpan, HIE and one of the largest remaining stashes of Kodachrome 25 that will be all used up by the end of 2010. I have a client who recently paid thousands for a 40 x 40 Ilfochrome from a medium format black and white slide, it is utterly spectacular and went straight from slide to print with no burning or dodging, it is darn fun I tell you.
Do what YOU want to do, not what the digital hype machine wants you to do. Shoot both if you want, many do. So scan your film and let it be that, film. Even the film images I have recently scanned and published look different than my digital images, so no, it is not digital, it is still film.
Regardless, enjoy it all and don't buy into the hype, life is too short to be like everyone else.
