Both have their uses; they just aren't the same uses.

As you say, for 'documentation' - where's the need for "art"? Was grandpa here? Yep - here's what he looks like.. And a photographer can very well augment his real camera with digital, to see about a proper perspective, or to document the means of some complex project. (Still. and always - the eye + brain do not 'see' as does a camera.. a topic on which volumes have been written.)

Photographs we see on walls - always tell some story. So does the occasional fortuitous snapshot; but that's usually a happy accident.. no?

As to the inefficiency you describe.. that's the photographer, not the availability of options. Yes, lore helps you to exploit those options / or not, just as most Pros keep a camera set at reasonable exposure, depth-of-field, etc. for an instant shot, today made even simpler by the automated exposures which you may switch on/off. ie a few seconds of setup is most often enough - if you know what you are trying to do; if you aren't sure: you 'bracket' the shots. Ditto with transistors, if there's time for more than one shot. Seems many digitals now facilitate multiple exposures. Much cheaper too than motorized film, where cheap matters.

Still, ignorance of the effects upon any picture of a knowledge of depth-of-field (and its psychological effects in the viewing) or of film-gamma - a more subtle factor determining available tonal gradations via special development actions - that ignorance will always limit results. Older digitals provided choice in neither speed nor f-stop; no doubt expensive ones will now approximate everything but.. the film characteristics.

Finally, the gross difference between snapshots and say, a final print of A Adams - is that many of his nature pictures required days to weeks for "that object and its lighting" to become realizable on that piece of film. It would be foolish to imagine homogenizing All That into anybody's one-size fits all. I think.

Just as, there will be no transistorized Bach Stradivarius trumpet as will enable me to play like Sergei Nakariakov (or amplified guitar that will sound like Segovia).


Vive la diff\ufffdrence !