Not better, just different.

Messing about with long exposures makes me realize film still has advantages for night photography over digital, in particular the wide-latitude in exposure and control of highlights. On the digital side, the quality is quite remarkable, but speckling and noise at times can be an issue. In-camera noise reduction can leave images a little ‘soft’ and can loose a detail (not good for big prints), something that can be tackled in post when shooting RAW files. Of course others might chip-in and tell you something else, but basically whenever you push any camera to the limit there will be some side effect, film or digital.

Many of the technical aspects I come across are only noticeable once you get past a certain print size. When I first started it was large format for a large print (not the romantic notion of slow photography). These days its a large digital sensor. Simple really, but try telling that to the masses.