the limits of digital photography

I recently posted a link to an article in the New York Times about HDR, a new phenomenon in digital photography to make pictures even more accurate in terms of exposure, lighting, and color. Just days later, the Times, in some kind of yin-yang reporting, interviewed John Coffer, an old-schooler who specializes in tintypes, a medium popular during the nineteenth century. Coffer also lives a nineteenth-century pioneer lifestyle, living in a log cabin he built himself. His photos on the NYT website are beautiful, and a reminder of the limits of digital photography (regardless of Photoshop). There is something magical and mysterious about old photographs - especially daguerrotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes, and the like.