Rugged Film

You can lose pictures taken by digital cameras, and you can lose pictures taken by film cameras. There's accidental erasure of JPG files, and there's film labs that lose rolls of film.

But generally, I would argue that memory cards are better than film cartridges. When my G1 camera got dipped in the Pacific Ocean, the camera was corroded beyond repair, but the 1GB MicroDrive continues to work just fine.

Here's another story: "SanDisk CF Card Survives Blast That Destroys Camera". A guy is taking pictures of a bridge that's supposed to be demolished, but the explosion goes wrong, wrecking the camera -- the memory card survives. Included in the article are the two last photographs taken by the camera.