Camille Labrecque bought her first digital camera a few years ago when she was 15 years old. At this point, iPhones and other smartphones were already spreading. But like many Gen Zers, his interest in photography blossomed thanks to retro cameras.
“My phone didn’t have as many settings as a camera, which I found more special,” says 21-year-old Camille Labrecque. “You can play with many angles and that makes photography more concrete as an activity,” explains the woman who inherited her father’s passion.
Despite the emergence of social networks like Instagram, where the photos circulating are often of high quality and retouched, many young people in their twenties are now grabbing old models of cameras, whether film, digital or Polaroid, in a sort of return to photographic sources. And the devices popular with young people are not professional devices that sell for thousands of dollars, but mostly small, accessible and inexpensive models, the very ones that were so popular in the 2000s.
More recently, Camille Labrecque has turned to analog models (also called film or motion picture cameras) whose photos are frozen on film inserted in the body and need to be further developed.
She’s not the only one to have made this turn. The hashtag #filmcamera (“film camera”) has more than 760 million views on TikTok. Several videos with this hashtag, which have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, are produced by young adults explaining how the device works and showing the photos taken.
Something is missing in the new technology. It’s too clean, too good. We don’t find the texture and organic process specific to film cameras.
The hashtag #digitalcamera (“digital camera” in French) has accumulated more than 300 million views. Charles Girard chose a digital camera for his trip to Tokyo this summer. The 19-year-old college student certainly could have settled for his phone to immortalize the best moments of his journey, but he doesn’t think the end result would have been the same. “If you’re going to travel, a digital camera is even better because you want to print out the photos and have them in real life, which I wouldn’t do with cell phone photos,” he explains.
In the UK, online shopping site eBay told the BBC that searches on the site for “retro digital cameras” increased by 13% in the last three months of 2022. Searches for “refurbished cameras” increased by 52% over the same period.
More than a trend
When the popularity of these retro items skyrockets among young people in the Anglo-Saxon world, Quebec can’t be beat. At least that’s what Bobby Tanoutasi, owner of the Photo Tek Canada store, observes. On the avenue du Mont-Royal, not far from the boulevard Saint-Laurent, in Montreal, the discreet shop hides in the urban fauna. But the inside turns out to be a real Ali Baba cave for those who love photography.
“Everything we sell is handmade,” explains Bobby, who has run the store for 20 years. Behind his counter, he proudly points to the various cameras that fill the shelves of his room. We see old devices that must be worth a small fortune, as well as smaller models that are accessible to as large a number as possible. The back room is a happy junk that mixes various devices stacked on top of each other.
“Retro cameras are a throwback to the basics,” he believes. “There is something missing in the new technology. It’s too clean, too good. We don’t find the texture and organic process specific to film cameras. »
In recent years he has noticed a growing interest in these objects among young people in Plateau-Mont-Royal. “Before the pandemic, hipsters started getting interested in gadgets, and interest increased during the pandemic,” he recalls. “After the pandemic, I thought it would stop, but no! In fact, while visiting Le Devoir in store on a Saturday afternoon, a young customer stopped by to get a film camera, her first ever.
“We see a lot of passing students who take up photography as a hobby,” says Zach Lata. The young woman who is newly employed in the trade is also passionate. “There’s a special feeling that comes with retro gear,” she says. “That’s the element of surprise. With an iPhone, what you see is what you get, but with a film camera, you don’t know until you develop the photos. For her, the return to such objects is not just a fad or a trend. “Everybody’s going back to film cameras! »
Bobby Tanoutasi finds his shop popular with an increasingly younger generation of photography enthusiasts. “I have customers who buy their first device at the age of 11,” he says with a smile. “I also have a 14-year-old client who has a collection of 20 cameras. I want to encourage him, so sometimes I give him small gadgets as gifts. »
So, despite the high quality goals of smartphones, some young people decide to abandon them in order to turn to models familiar to their parents and grandparents. Back to basics? Looking for authenticity? Want to get more involved in the act of taking photos? Maybe a little bit of all of that.