slowly abandoning digital

My first camera that I paid for with my own money was digital Nikon D70s, back in 2007. At that time this model was already 3y old and fairly affordable even for me. Digital photography was already dominating and I didnt even consider going analogue (both for performance and cost as well).

But, having spent last 6y or so, shooting pretty much only digital, I have started to get to know more and more about photography in general and somewhere in time I've started to be tempted by analogue and film techniques. It was the pinhole photography that came first! After browsing in internet some amazing efects that could be achieved with home made, matchbox camera obscura, I wanted to try it myself! And I loved it from the start: the "building" of the camera itself with several failed results, through the first tries, the waiting for prints, fixing the "construction" and recalculating exposure times, all till some first successes... great experience.

But soon it was not enough. Long exposure times limited me to specific shooting only. As I was already in love with film, I wanted a real full manual analogue camera to really learn about photography. I was lucky enough to find in my father's old stuff, hidden deep in old boxes, russian camera FED-5 with Industar lens 55mm f/2.8. Full manual, great for learning. Despite being 40 years old it still gave me some nice results and I kept taking it more and more often together with my digital Nikon.

Just few months ago, I got a crazy idea of trying out medium format. And this is actually where analogue and film can still come out cheaper than digital! As the prices of MF digital cameras are out of this world for me, the reasonable option was to look for some antique on ebay for few euros and repair it for another few euros to become operational. This way, in December 2013 I became an owner of Rolleiflex Automat with Tessar 75mm f/3.5 from 1938 :-D No need to mention that I fell in love immediately...

I have already posted one photo from this camera last week (from Psila Alonia square, top of stairs, looking to Trion Navarchon pedestrian str) and several others from FED-5 throughout the last year. Today is the icon of Patras, Agios Andreas church at night with about 4s exposure. Doesn't it look great on film?

As I shoot more and more often with both FED and Rollei now, I noticed recently that I do not carry my digital Nikon's at all for walks around Patras! I am not saying I will abandon them completely but I am thinking of posting here only photos from my new-old toys :-D

Photo: Rolleiflex Automat, Kodak T-max 100, developed and scanned at M. Alexopoulos (amfotolab.gr)