"[N]ostalgia for the Y2K era... has seized Generation Z.... Among some Gen Z-ers, the digital camera has become popular because it appears more authentic online, and not necessarily because it is a break from the internet, said Brielle Saggese, a lifestyle strategist at the trend forecasting company WGSN Insight. Photos taken with digital cameras can impart 'a layer of personality that most iPhone content doesn’t,' she said. 'We want our devices to quietly blend into our surroundings and not be visible'...."
I have so many old cameras in my defunct tech drawer. I'd have thrown them out, but now I have to keep them on the theory that someone may want them, though I'm thoroughly disinclined to put in the effort to sell them and ship them to some aspiring Gen Z influencer.
I suspect that this craze is all about the cheap flash look to photos taken of people indoors at night. I have a little nostalgia for photos I took on my iPhone, circa 2007, when my camera battery ran out and I had to settle for what the phone could do — something rough and tending toward the abstract. I wish I could find them.
ADDED: Oh! Wait. I did find them... immediately after hitting publish. From October 15, 2007: "Doing a photo walk with only an iPhone":
"I left the house without putting my battery in my camera, so I had to resort to my iPhone. Via iPhone, things looked like this:
"What is that iPhone look? It seems melancholy."
The first comment, from TML, was: "My friend John says the iPhone is the new Holga. Could be. Could be."
Now, the kids want the camera I was missing, the camera that was better than the iPhone that was better than the Holga, and they have no memory at all of the thing called Holga.
ALSO: Here's a photo of me my son John took with my iPhone that day:
AND: There's one more photo from that day, one that I put up on Flickr but not on the blog. It's that vantage point in DUMBO that all the Instagrammers have turned into a massive cliché:
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22 years or so ago we bought a digital camera that was cutting edge. At the time we were living in Venice, so every photo is special to me. Looking at them now, they're a pixelated mess. The resolution is so bad, they're basically unusable.
How sad. In the old film stock days, so much was possible by manipulating the emulsion. Don't use a failed tech to reproduce something that was more thrilling with an even older tech.
I had a Sony that saved the pics to a mini CD. It was the shit at the time.
This seems to parallel the trend toward spinning vinyl. What's old is new, and sometimes even better (but not a 20-year old point and shoot camera). An iPhone can take a really nice photo, but it gives you little control over it. That's why you can get those massive color shifts in the morning/evening. They are almost always an artifact of the camera's auto white balance selection, which is a form of AI. A dedicated camera allows for control of such settings though navigating their menu systems can be painful. And yes, they still make them.
What’s old is new again. But in this case, digital camera are still a thing (to say nothing of the fact that smart phone cameras are digital cameras - I know, pedantic, as they are talking about form factor rather than the technology).
I suspect that the digital cameras that they are referring to allowed you more control over the photo-making process, attempting to simulate actual film camera (SLR) necessary features. Some did it well, others not so much. However, the nostalgia generated by those cameras is that they were treated as we treat the iPhone camera - point and shoot - without any consideration of the multitude of settings.
Interestingly, the iPhone has setting to pseudo-replicate a nostalgia look, but requires adjusting the settings. The reverse of the older cameras.
I’m sure most of us here remember the transition from film to digital (uphill both ways).
From the NYTimes article:
"Among some Gen Z-ers, the digital camera has become popular because it appears more authentic online"
and
"Compared to today’s smartphones, older digital cameras have fewer megapixels, which capture less detail, and built-in lenses with higher apertures, which let in less light, both of which contribute to lower-quality photos."
The first quote strikes me as accurate, but the second quote may miss the mark.
Newer smartphone cameras often do not take more authentic photos.
See the following regarding the iPhone 11 (the most current models are the iPhone14 series).
"On the iPhone 11 Pro, every time you are about to take a picture, the cameras will quickly take eight images of the object before you press the shutter. When you actually take a photo, the phone will compare your image against the eight previously taken ones and merge the best pixels of each image into one final product."
https://observer.com/2019/09/apple-event-iphone-11-pro-artificial-intelligence-camera/
There is still a vogue for photoless photography, which is the manipulation of expensive photographic equipment for its own sake.
The kids are hungry for media storage that isn’t in “the cloud” or dependent on a subscription. Apple has all but declared that they have ownership over the photos you take with their iPhones, going so far as to hint at removing content that violates their sensibilities or sensitivities. That and drawers across the land full of slightly larger than a mouse digital cameras that are still operable makes this look fairly inevitable. Many also use the tiny SISD cards and both our recent laptops have the slot for it so we download video from our trail camera. Same tech still going strong.
Young people now like blurry photos and scratchy records.........we're de-volving.
You don't have to look at the camera to aim it and shoot it in the old style. An on-screen shutter button is a loser because you can't feel it.
This "old" stuff is still decades in the future for me. When I was cleaning out my parents' drawers I found old film cameras. Like typewriters and cassette players, they weren't anything to be nostalgic about.
Maybe I should try to sell my dads old slide rule to one of them.
Must be weird being a little kid these days.
Every single moment of your life is captured by doting parents.
And then you grow up to record, document, and distribute every single moment of your own life.
One of the few good reasons to be 'old.'
I backpack with a Sony RX-100, which is a 10 oz. point-and-shoot with mechanical telephoto, legit lenses, advanced settings, less iPhone-type AI, and high resolution. That way I get better photos with more control and can leave the phone off for backup and emergencies that almost never happen anyway, and that saves me from carrying recharging gear on long trips like the JMT. Lots of manual settings (ISO, f-stop, exposure time, focus).
Photos on both the camera and the phone are saved raw as well as jpg, so when it matters I can do my own processing at home rather than relying on the camera's judgment.
My Gen Z daughter can one up that. She has a Polaroid camera.
I don't think my Panasonic Lumix compact point-and-shoot digital underwater camera will ever be replaced by a phone camera. Beautiful images above and below water.
My 17 year old daughter sent me an iPhone pic of two Polaroids her friends took at a New Years party. Ahead of the trend, I guess.
Lurker21 said...
Like typewriters and cassette players, they weren't anything to be nostalgic about.
Hey now!!!!
Okay, so I have 19 typewriters, all but two are manuals. To be honest, I had no nostalgia for them -- hated them when I was a kid and took up computers as fast as I could -- but now I love them. I'd never try to do actual work on them, obviously, which is why I can enjoy them now for just writing letters. Perhaps there's a little nostalgia for my youth in using them. I still have a bunch of records, but only play them every now and then, instead I stream nearly everything.
So, ermmm, Althouse, if you do happen to have a typewriter or two sitting in a closet somewhere. . . . .
An on-screen shutter button is a loser because you can't feel it.
Yes, tactile feedback, and tactile grip. Also, optical vs digital focal length a la analog vs digital fidelity.
Understanding Focal Length
A Gen Z friend of mine had to eat crow after he ridiculed me for having a separate digital camera, as opposed to my smart phone, and then his girlfriend gave him a 35mm film camera as a Christmas present.
From attached phones to block phones to pocket phones to block phones. At least we got more functionality and a shorter battery life. Progress is a many splendored... unqualified thing.
Ann Althouse said: The first comment, from TML, was: "My friend John says the iPhone is the new Holga. Could be. Could be." Now, the kids want the camera I was missing, the camera that was better than the iPhone that was better than the Holga, and they have no memory at all of the thing called Holga.
Actually, this is a subset of the very popular film revival, which includes sales of new Holgas and Dianas. Amazon sells a variety of Holgas, and Lomography has built an entire business around the Diana and other retro photography products.
Cjf
My husband buys old digital cameras when he sees them in flea markets, thrift stores, etc and even off ebay. He doubts any faddish boom since the prices remain stable. (He collects them as part of his interest in antiquarian technology. They sit on display not too far from the tube testers and metronomes.)
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