I share some of your feelings. But I see both sides, I want to play a bit of devil's advocate here. I tried to hang on to my darkroom equipment for over a decade, and despite the joy of darkroom work, I just never used it. Too expensive, too time-consuming, everything film related being phased out and hard to get. Not to mention digital being so much easier, better, more reliable, etc.
> For the amateurs of the world and those of us doing it for the sheer joy of it, film is unsurpassed.
I feel like that too, but I'd like to understand more clearly exactly what was lost. Are we just being nostalgic? Is obsessing over the tactile part of the experience missing what's important about creating imagery or music? Are we ignoring the fact that the new generation has their own tactile experience that is different but not worse than ours was? We associate these tactile experiences with our joy of discovery and creation, but perhaps they're incidental and not very important to actually being creative.
> Plus there's something about the smell of a darkroom. The hot lamps of the enlargers create a smell that mixes with the smell of the fixer and the stop bath that's unmistakable.
I never got over the feeling that I was giving myself cancer or something else breathing and touching the chemicals. The vinegary smell of fixer isn't something I miss personally.
> something has been lost.
FWIW, doing my own image processing by writing my own code has taken the place of doing my own darkroom work, and white it's obviously less tactile, it still gives me a similar feeling of touching the images.