Slow day: digital

A few weeks ago I posted about a slow day shooting with film. That was generally indicative: when I'm struggling for images with the film, I can struggle to expose a single roll in a day.

Wel, last night was something of the digital equivalent. having shot a lot of B&W film recently, I got out the digital with the express intent of capturing colour. I seemd to be struggly a bit for subjects. Choosing a wooded walk with limited variety in subtle shades of green didn't help. I did a few experiments, as I'm wont with digital. Not a great hour's stroll, photographically.

Thing is, I got 70 exposures in the hour. Doesn't seem unproductive when looked at from that angle.

I think it is the experimentation thing. When I'm not finding what I want with digital, I end up shooting all kinds of random nonsense. This helps me figure out a bit better what might work, or not, both by subject and technique. This doesn't happen with film. For one, I'm much more aware of what does and does not work in film for a given lens & film type combination. I also tend to use primes with film.

My conclusion: digital might actually be useful for getting out of a rut, with the ability to try a bunch of stuff and see what happens. In this mode I do quite a lot of chimping. Film, on the other hand, is good for focus, honing in on a particular style or subject and can help temper some of my wilder enthusiasms for banging away on the shutter release.