Today's young adults grew up in a time when their youth was documented with smartphone cameras rather than dedicated digital or film cameras. It's not surprising that, perhaps in response to the ubiquity of the phone, some young creative photographers are ditching their handsets in their pockets in favor of compact digital cameras, the type that camera manufacturers are actively phasing out.
Much of the buzz among this creative class has focused on high-end, chic models like the Fujifilm G7 and Sony RX100 models, which can be great for selfies.
But other shutterbugs are harking back to the past twenty years or more and adding a vintage “Y2K aesthetic” to their work. The MySpace look is strong: many photographers are shooting with authentic early 2000s “digicams,” pointing their cameras – with bright flashes – at their friends and creating washed-out, grainy, low-resolution photos that look a lot like 2003 .
“I think it's so wild because I'm an older millennial,” says Ali O'Keefe, who runs the photography channel Two Months One Camera on YouTube. “My childhood was captured on film… but for [young people]Theirs were probably all captured on something like Canon SD1000s,” she says, referring to a popular point-and-shoot from mid-childhood.
It's not just the retro sensibility they're going for, but also some cool credibility. Everyone from Ayo Edibiri to Kendall Jenner is helping to stoke the digicam fever by taking public snaps with a vintage pocket camera.
The rise of the vintage digital camera marks at least the second great nostalgia boom in the photography world. More than fifteen years ago, a film revival brought thousands of cameras from the 1970s and 1980s out of closets and into handbags and backpacks. Companies like Impossible Project and Film Ferrania started production of Polaroid-compatible and 35mm film respectively, jumpstarting production equipment that would otherwise have gone to the scrap heap. Traditional film companies such as Kodak and Ilford have seen sales increase. Unfortunately, the price of film stock has also increased significantly, making film processing more expensive as well. (Having a roll developed and digitally scanned now typically costs between $15 and $20.)
