Not sure if it can make anyone a 'better photographer' as becoming a photographer has nothing to do with equipment but the ability to see a picture, use composition and read the light. However, I do believe that using digital can be a better teaching aid than film simply because of the fact that preview is instant, studio cameras with Polaroid backs were not used to show off, it gave the photographers the first safety net.
I think there is always a danger in discussing things like this that you open up the old argument that many people have that modern digital photographers just shoot away and hope something turns up on screen later. I seem to remember a similar argument against 35mm when the 'old school' accused the 'pop' photographers of the seventies of shooting hundreds of 35mm frames in the hope that by sheer force of numbers, a few must turn out OK. This argument was rubbish then as it is now.
I well remember in the 80s when I first started getting, or trying to get serious, about photography the sheer frustration of not seeing the images I had taken for, sometimes, days after the shoot. By this time my expectations of what I had hoped for mostly crashed when I finally saw the prints or slides. The time span also made the picture taking and the print viewing remote.
I remember the time when I virtually gave up on photography. I was not far from your neck of the woods Richpips, on the moors above Hathersage trying to get a good shot of Higger Tor with an Olympus OM1 and my favourite film TriX. The weather was bleak and the scenery matched it. I was exposing at 3200 ASA to get a good gritty feel to the pictures. Using a 24mm (I think) lens and getting low down to emphasise the bleakness and use the moorland grass as a foreground I shot what I felt was a good series.
Sadly, the next day after carefully processing the film and doing some test prints, I was once more gutted by the poor images I had. I could see from the prints what I thought I had done wrong but I was so disappointed, I didn't bother to go back and try again, the moment was lost.
Now I cannot be certain that if I had been shooting digital and viewing on the screen that I would have realised I was not getting what I thought but, I feel fairly confident that I may have. If so, this would have enabled me to change a few things and probably got nearer to what I had in my mind's eye.
To me the immediacy is one of the greatest assets and, coupled with the Histogram, I suffer less disappointment now than I did then. Does this make me a better photographer? Probably not but it does help me enjoy my hobby much more and I know I have more pictures to keep now than I did with film. I do miss my beloved TriX though, nothing can emulate the real quality of film grain.
.While waiting on film to get developed.
