How to apply film photography mentality into digital shooting?

My Olympus OM-1 is like a magic wand to me. For some reason I just get more shit done with it. It almost seems to lead me to the subjects. As John Free puts it: “the camera strap pulls me to the subjects.” But when I pick up digital camera or even my Canon AE-1, my mentality changes immediately and my keeper rate drops.

Olympus OM-1 is an all manual camera. Light meter is the only electronical feature in it, and even that is a very basic one. Having such a primitive camera slows me down enough to be picky enough about when and why I press the shutter. AE-1 has a shutter priority mode, which doesn’t sound like much, but it takes a huge amount of responsibility away from me, because I don’t have to put my mind into the exposure settings in the same way. Digital camera has all the gizmos you can wish for, which isn’t always a good thing. At least I start to rely on the digital features too much and stop thinking enough.

I’d like to learn how to apply the same kind of mentality to my digital photography that I have with my OM-1. I always have my camera with me and when I leave the house, I’ll usually choose which camera to take with me that day. I know that I’ll end up getting better shots if I take the OM-1. On the other hand, I might not take a single image the entire day, because I get very picky. Some days I might choose the digital camera because I feel like just shooting away. The result usually is 78 bad snapshots.

To put it in another words, with digital camera I feel like I’m just pointing the camera at things and pressing the button, where as with the OM-1, I feel like I’m doing photography.

Film teaches me a lot of discipline, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. I love digital cameras almost as much, but I’d need to learn to use one just like a film camera. I’d just like to be a better photographer, regardless of the medium. Being a film enthusiast may give the impression that I’m an analog only hipster that doesn’t respect digital photography, but that is not true.

In a way photography and cameras are two different things. Photography in itself is more about the actual skill and cameras are the physical tools for it. As you know, there are pros and cons to both film and digital. Digital has of course the advantage of being very practical and fast. At the moment I feel like I’m not taking advantage of that aspect of it, because I generally do worse job by shooting digital. My plans for the future definitely involves learning to implement the so called film mentality to my digital photography, that seems to lead me towards more satisfying and meaningful photography.