Jennifer K Shields

I took my mirrorless digital camera out for the first time in a while today - as in, it was the only camera with me (other than my phone)!

It took me a good while to get used to it again, after only shooting film for the last three months. I was almost overwhelmed with the options, with setting everything via a screen, with only a mode wheel and an unlabelled wheel on the top of the camera.

Flowers for the Avon river for the 10th anniversary of the Christchuch quakes

My mirrorless is a Sony A6000, and when I first bought it I was thrilled! It was an upgrade from my chunky 5 year old Olympus DSLR, and I really wanted something light. I loved the moveable screen and the digital viewfinder, and I was thrilled with how quick and easy everything was.

I’ve deified film so much that my A6000 has been gathering dust.

To make matters worse, I shoot in RAW - which is a delight when it comes to editing, but in the actual shooting, with a digital viewfinder, everything looks flat and colourless and doesn’t match what my eye perceives, which is a real challenge!

Flowers in road cones has become a tradition

But I think these challenges are making me better at using it. Even though as soon as I started shooting today, I found myself taking throwaway shots that I wouldn’t with film, I was still slower and more deliberate than I’ve ever been with the A6000.

Finding myself with the flat RAW viewfinder, I spent more time composing and thinking about the shot before ever putting my eye to the camera. I felt more conscious about the camera’s settings - even while still letting it set aperture, shutter speed, and iso, I found myself taking note of the settings before taking the shot.

They're removing the fences around the red zone

I haven’t felt drawn to my digital camera since starting shooting film, but I have loved it before, and I will absolutely continue to love it. It’s just that film is making me more deliberate and more conscious, and the fast fast fast of the mirrorless was really jarring today! But jarring in the good way - it’s making me more deliberate and conscious with digital, too.