A film SLR will be far better, and a much smaller investment than a dSLR. As for photoshop, I found it a bit wierd when I did my As Photography, I'm fairly confident with it, however I barely used it for my projects, because I far more enjoyed using film, thus I rarely scanned in images. Photoshop really isn't the be all and end all of the As, it really is just a small part.