You're right, in that the D-SLR makes pressing the button free, fast, and furious. Another benefit, relative to Ansel Adams, is that the digital darkroom (i.e., Photoshop) makes things ever-so-painless. I took a summer class from a former lab assistant of Ansel Adams in 1988, and learned many of Adams' tricks. We're talking painstaking stuff, e.g.:

- Keeping a pot of developer on a hot plate that you can dab onto your print with q-tips (for spot darkening)

- Very fine brushes and "spot tone" to brush out dust marks

In Photoshop, that sort of thing, never mind the fancier Zone System issues, can be almost completely replaced with the modest use of fairly basic Photoshop filters. What that means for us is that you can produce stunning results in minutes that formerly took hours. Or, with hours of elbow grease, you can produce results that were largely unobtainable in a darkroom. (Exception to the rule: see Jerry Uelsmann.)

What Ansel did that few of us with day jobs can do, is patiently wait for the perfect weather, the moon just right, and so forth. He lived in Yosemite Valley. What would be lucky for us was (to some extent) the result of persistence on his part.