alt Hacker News> And paying for a monthly subscription is probably overkill for most casual photographers.
But film (the actual roll + development + scan) is very expensive, at least in my parts. Sure, you may mean "casual" as in "maybe shoots a roll a film a year", in which case I guess it's quite cheaper than an Adobe LR subscription. But if you shoot a roll a month or more? Then Adobe wins hands down (I'm talking the photography plan here, not the whole thing).
The cheapest stock I could find is a C-41 negative, b&w Agfa APX 400 iso, 36 pictures for 7.90 €. Color C-41 starts at 11 € with a 24 picture Kodak Ultra Max, bought as a set of 3 rolls. Developing and scanning costs 12 € for 2000x3000 px or 20 € for 4500x6700 px. That's 19.90 €, or the price of the base Adobe Photography plan.
Yes, financially doesn't make much sense to go from digital to film. Film costs, absolutely. But you end up shooting less, thinking more, waiting for the right shot and so on. You also move sliders/tweak less and mistakes teach you lessons that you quickly learn from. Sometimes there are happy accidents as well. Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experience. Yes, the Adobe light room seems cheap in comparison to film but, that's the wrong comparison IMO. There are other tools out there that are much cheaper than Adobe's offerings if not completely free. Digital has made photography available to the masses, everybody's got a camera nowadays. However, it did kill something and what it killed is what these folk are looking for (that something that got lost in the process).
I'm not into photography anymore and will stick to cheap digital photography for convenience (smart phone) but I could see how this works out for these folks and I believe it's not just a fad or signaling. Similarly, for music, analog instruments could be replicated and enhanced digitally/electronically and yet they're what you're after sometimes.