Is the Digital camera going to replace old fashioned chemistry- based photography or is it just hype from the computer industry?

More and more photographic shops are offering digital print services alongside chemical processing.

Less obvious is the way digital photography is helping to promote the rise of chemical-based (silver halide) photography as an "elitist" art form.

Most of us have a soft spot for black and white photographs.

They conjure up memories of childhood, elderly friends or deceased relatives. We like the idea black and white photographs can capture a "golden age" and preserve the memories for ever.

Somehow a digital image does not have the same emotional value.

This perceived value is helping to put the black and white photograph industry back in the front line of technological achievement.

It is a lot easier to drop images on to a computer and print them, without fuss or bother, on an ink-jet printer. But the results are not always quite as glossy as a "proper" photograph and the moodiness of those delicious old black and white prints is often missing.

Digital prints are very easy to produce, though, and thousands of perfect reproductions are available at the click of a mouse.

To get conventional photographs you need to spend a long time learning the process. Most people simply do not have the time or inclination to become skilled photographic technicians.

This helps to make the black and white chemical process photograph a thing of real value. The end-result is always unique because each photograph is produced individually.

Black and white images, hand-printed on to glossy or matt paper, have an expensive look and feel - hard to reproduce with a digital print-out.

They are highly personalised as the hand-printer will crop and alter the image during processing and printing to give the best results.

Digital images can now be reproduced quite effectively in black and white, although the process requires special inks to replicate the different shades of black and grey in a photograph.

These inks are expensive and demand a dedicated printer used only for black and white digital prints - not something the average amateur photographer would contemplate.

The images produced by this process are, in the main, excellent but demand a high-quality digital camera capable of delivering extremely high resolution images (with massive file sizes), advanced computer skills and a good working knowledge of photography.

An alternative is to combine both chemical photography and digital technology to produce a hybrid image.

An original, high-quality "film"negative can be scanned to produce a high-resolution digital image suitable for digital manipulation and enhancement.

This is one of the most complex photographic processes in the book and is both elegant and expensive.

So, before you throw away your old point-and-shoot film camera and invest in digital technology, remember the average digital camera is great for all those holiday snaps you look at once and then stuff into a drawer.

But if you want something a little more evocative and up-market, you will still need to find a proper photographer.