I have been shooting film a lot more recently and I have fallen back in love with it. I even feel like I'm not necessarily conservative with shooting the film based on the price but also just more aware of what I want to shoot now. So I don't go crazy like I would with digital. And even there I feel like I've slowed down a bit. Perhaps from walking the same streets so much to the point of exhaustion. Where only at events does it seem like there's something worthy of shooting. In a few days I will have a Canon FD 28mm F2.8 for the Canon AE-1, another vintage lens but actually for the vintage camera it was made for. I'm really excited to use it, and I do think that given I'm 10 shots into a roll of film now, I'm almost waiting for that lens to continue again.
So I switched to digital today and I just could not enjoy it. Everything felt a bit too blown out with the digital camera, the strong Armenian sun had some really harsh light that just did not work with the lens and camera. Everything felt tighter given the digital camera has an APS-C sensor and 35mm is full frame. I feel like I really need that extra space of a wider focal length and I've definitely said it a few times before here. But maybe that's why I switched to film again, knowing that it is actually full frame. Feeling more manual and in control than with the digital. Where film can look good in intense light, but digital needs ND filters and such, and that's where shooting digital at the moment just hasn't been that fun.
I don't think I'm ultimately giving up with digital, I just think that it has some limitations at the moment that have been pulling back my creative potential, and I can definitely feel it in the moment. Whereas going back to the film camera has almost felt like a form of liberation. Back to the simplicity of a more mechanically feeling camera. Even with the vintage lenses on the Sony something still feels a bit off, but again I do think it's the sensor as well as the crop that is introduced on those lenses. It definitely feels more challenging to take anything I feel like I actually enjoy. But the fun of photography is that you can just switch to some other camera with a different format and find something new in it.