The Y2K aesthetic in digital cameras
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I have to dig up my old digicam and try to sell it….
Today’s young adults grew up in a time when their childhoods were documented with smartphone cameras instead of dedicated digital or film cameras. It’s not surprising that, perhaps as a reaction to the ubiquity of the phone, some young creative photographers are leaving their handsets in their pockets in favor of compact point-and-shoot digital cameras—the very type that camera manufacturers are actively discontinuing.
Much of the buzz among this creative class has centered around premium, chic models like the Fujifilm X100 and Ricoh GR, or for the self-anointed “digicam girlies” on TikTok, zoom point-and-shoots like the Canon PowerShot G7 and Sony RX100 models, which can be great for selfies.
But other shutterbugs are reaching back into the past 20 years or more to add a vintage “Y2K aesthetic” to their work. The MySpace look is strong with a lot of photographers shooting with authentic early-2000s “digicams,” aiming their cameras—flashes a-blazing—at their friends and capturing washed-out, low-resolution, grainy photos that look a whole lot like 2003..
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I get the nostalgia, but from what I can see the new iPhone camera renders every other camera obsolete.
And you can text on it!
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I agree with @AdagioM and @Steve-Miller . And the other thing that’s always a hassle is getting photos off the camera and somewhere where you can use them.
That’s why I stopped using the digital audio recorder I bought to make piano recordings. (The Zoom H4 that everyone at PW seemed to be using not so long ago.) it made very good quality recordings, but you had to get them off of the recorder and onto a laptop.
That extra step was enough to kill the device for me.
I still have one, in a closet somewhere…
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@ShiroKuro I still have mine, too! Pro tip: Take the batteries out! Mine had leaked a bit, but the recorder still works. I just use the voice memo app on my iPhone for recording audio. Mostly at choir practice, these days. Or occasionally when singing with friends.
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What’s old is new again, I guess. People are digging out Walkmen and iPods, too.
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I hear cassettes are the new vinyl.
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My iPhone (XS, so older) takes better pictures than my compact mirrorless camera. So that’s what I use for everything.
Which reminds me…I’m trying to decide if I should upgrade, before possible tariffs. It’s an old phone, but it does almost everything I want. I’d only upgrade for a nicer camera, that can capture the aurora borealis. I was jealous of all the stunning photos I saw this year! But if you can only see it through your phone, did you really see it?
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The camera on my new phone is amazing! The trade in offer made getting it fairly painless.
