The digicam comeback

For several years, the so-called “Y2K” moniker has been retroactively applied to clothing, music, pop culture, and media that are in fact only loosely related. We are several years into a Y2K revival, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. According to Google Trends, search traffic for “digital cameras” started picking up around the winter of 2022 and is currently at a five-year high. Ask a teen or young adult in your life — they probably know at least a few friends who show up to parties with a digital camera, likely inspired by a video they saw exalting this gadget of yore. But for some, the humble digicam isn’t just a trend. It’s art.

For years, the admins of Digicam.love have curated an Instagram page of photos taken with digital cameras. The group accepts submissions from around the world and hosts in-person meetups and events for other enthusiasts. 

“The eventual goal is to establish a place where we can also research and preserve these old devices,” says Sofia Lee, 33, one of the founders of Digicam.love and the lead of the group’s Dutch contingent. “[We also want to] teach people how to use them, and maybe someday how to repair them.”

Lee has been shooting on digital cameras for over a decade, and as she talks about the devices, they begin to sound more and more human. The camera, she says, is a collaborator with the photographer. Any camera, even a top-of-the-line professional model, has limitations or quirks. “The drive to planned obsolescence actually results in this massive quantity of cameras and devices that have not lived out their entire life,” Lee says. “I started wondering if there was a story that they had to tell, if there was perspective or story that these cameras had to share that was not being shared.”

Digicam.love, perhaps more than any other archive, highlights the diversity of these gadgets and the results they yield. In some images, lights in pictures gleam soft and sleepily, like living in a scene out of In the Mood for Love. In others, there’s a harsh matter-of-fact-ness — in one picture recently shared on Instagram, two swans in a body of water reflect the bright flash of the camera. The birds look dreamy yet mundane, like they were dropped into the scene and you, the viewer, just happened across them. A grainy flatness makes even a fairly cliché setting like the horizon line at the beach feel transporting — paired, of course, with a date and timestamp in the lower corner.

Lee stresses that her work — and Digicam.love — is more than just a nostalgic trend or a group of people obsessed with the past. It’s an artistic practice, but it’s also a community: a group of people from around the world exploring a technology that is, in some ways, marginalized. 

A decade ago, secondhand digital cameras were abundant and cheap — Lee built up the bulk of her collection shopping at thrift stores, where cameras cost as little as $5. You could go to e-waste recycling centers in person and come home with treasures. Now, certain models have become highly covetable and collectible. Gone are the days, Lee says, of these cameras floating around for just a few dollars.

Though “Y2K” is often colloquially used to describe everything from Ed Hardy to low-rise jeans, the term technically describes an era predating the maximalist opulence of the Paris Hilton era. Think soft, rounded corners on furniture, transparent electronics, and lots of silver. As the year 2000 approached, a doomsday vision spread: that computer systems would melt down, taking banks, hospitals, and society with it.

“[People are drawn] to a lost future, the idea of a futuristic zeitgeist that never took shape past 2001,” says Froyo Tam, 27, who helps run the Y2K Aesthetic Institute, which documents consumer culture of the 1990s. “That [Y2K] vision of the future was basically gone at that point.” 

Digital cameras are worlds away from how most people are used to taking photos in the current era: with a smartphone that is also a music player, a TV, and a way to browse the internet and talk with friends. The digicam exists only for itself; there’s no Instagram integration or AirDrop feature. It’s one device that does one thing — a novelty in a world awash with “everything apps” and devices. There’s also the tactile experience of digital cameras: small, comfortable, and “friendly,” as Tam puts it.

Tam, who is also part of the Digicam.love team, has at least two dozen cameras, and she brings a few to our interview to share. There’s the Olympus µ (Mju) Mini, released in 2004, which she calls her favorite digicam of all time. Tam owns four or five of them in different colors.

“The Mju Mini takes beautiful photos. The noise on it is incredible,” Tam says. “I usually shoot it at high ISOs to really bring out that noise when it comes to shadows or dimly lit places. It kind of feels more atmospheric.”

Another favorite is the Kodak DC240i Zoom, a camera from 1999 that looks almost toy-like by today’s standards, with its clear plastic components and the bright, candy-colored outer shell. Only 1,000 were made of each colorway, inspired by the popularity of the iMac G3.

After our call, I hunted online for the Kodak, curious what the going rate is. I found none for sale except for a blue one on eBay, priced at $42.58. The seller — a Goodwill branch in North Carolina — listed the camera as nonfunctioning. Perhaps a few years ago, it would have sat on a shelf in a thrift store, waiting for someone like Lee or Tam to buy it for $5 and become enamored. 

Both Lee and Tam describe the current digicam market as being largely driven by specific camera models suddenly spiking in popularity. People might see someone share photos that have a look they’re drawn to and then go out and purchase that exact model for themselves. 

“I [had] a viral tweet where I ran Doom on one of my digital cameras,” Tam says. “And then suddenly, they were starting to sell like hotcakes on eBay. And I was like, ‘Oh no, what did I do?’”

Lee, too, has complicated feelings about the niche breaking into the mainstream. Even for longtime collectors, it’s become infinitely harder to find certain cameras as the resale market has exploded.  

“People are looking for cameras because they’re looking for a certain look that’s associated with them… And that creates an instant hype,” she says. “It honestly has made me really sad that I cannot be as open about what camera I’m using or which ones I like.”

Dorado’s operation at the Brooklyn Flea is a family affair: merchandise is stored at his home, and his siblings help work the booth on the weekends. His sister adds the extra decorative stickers to some models.

Pixel Picz’s inventory comes in the form of huge pallets from overseas, a grab bag of 400 to 500 digital cameras each. It’s hit or miss: sometimes, cameras he buys for resale don’t work. Dorado tests each and finds batteries and chargers before bringing them for sale. At the booth, cheaper models are sold for around $40; pricier options are above $250. 

Dorado was born in 2003, when digital cameras were plentiful, but he didn’t get his first camera until recently. For him, digital cameras are flexible and accessible — he can play with settings to get a 35mm film look without the cost of buying and developing film, which has soared in price. That doesn’t even factor in the price of a new digital SLR.

“Nowadays, good cameras cost over $1,000,” he says. “Realistically speaking, not many people are willing to spend $1,000 on their first camera… This is pretty much how they start.”

For many young people, bringing digicams to events or a night out is a fun way to document their lives that feels distinct from snapping dozens of pictures on a cellphone. There’s a preciousness to each shot, not dissimilar to shooting on film. Waiting for the digicam friend to upload and share a new batch of pictures creates anticipation. Also, people just think the pictures look good.

“I think that the iPhone cameras are a little bit too high-definition,” Jacqueline GaNun, who is browsing Dorado’s stand, says. “But something about the digital quality, it kind of smooths everything out. And the flash just makes everybody look really good.” It’s true that newer iPhone models have a certain look to the photos they take. As companies like Apple pile on post-processing features like Smart HDR, photos have become uncannily real and overly sharp — and it’s not just digicam fans that are annoyed by it.

Some of Dorado’s customers are pulled in by nostalgia. Across the booth, Errol Anderson, 32, is playing with a Sony Handycam ($200), rotating the screen and holding it above the child strapped to his front body, so his young son can get a look at himself through the camcorder. It’s as if the two were transported to the flea market from another moment in time. Anderson remembers his own childhood, where camcorders documented family time; he wants that for his son, too. 

It’s funny to think of this experience recurring now, decades after these cameras were first produced and sold — photos from 2024 being intentionally made to look like 2004. Perhaps in 20 years, the flea market shoppers will be swept up by nostalgia, too. They’ll browse old photos taken on their little point-and-shoots, rediscovered and given a new life decades after their origins. And they’ll think, I remember that era. Whichever time it was.