"Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner."
Author Unknown
Whilst there is a great deal of wisdom in the above statement, it tends to mask one of the significant realities of photography in this digital age: like for like, professional photography today requires more complex and more expensive equipment than working with film ever did. But in return for that burden, digital photography offers a whole raft of benefits.
The single greatest difference is the ability to carry every possible type of film with you at all times. Fast, slow, colour, black and white, contrasty, grainy, saturated, subdued: a single "digital negative" can be any of these, at the photographer's will. Furthermore, there is no cost "per shot" as with film. So the photographer can use a virtually unlimited amount of "film" in order to explore a subject fully and ensure a successful outcome.
The most important change in technique is the ability to review pictures on the little screen on the back of the camera. This instant feedback, the vastly more convenient replacement for Polaroid film, confirms exposure, focus, colour balance and, of course, composition. It gives the photographer confidence to move on to the next shot quickly, ultimately guaranteeing greater creative variety.
After the shoot, in the "digital darkroom", the photographer continues the creative process, turning the marvellously flexible "digital negatives" into the images that he and/or the client envisioned. Contrary to the logic, this is a remarkably time-consuming process: each hour spent shooting can require many more hours "in the darkroom". Where a particular one-hour shoot might take one hour to "process", another might run to four hours, five hours or even longer.