Much like the resurgence in popularity of film photography, older digital cameras (aka digicams) are fast becoming the go-to for many shutterbugs who are looking to find a distinctive look and feel. But there’s much more to these vintage digital devices than just a lo-fi aesthetic. We spoke to four digicam enthusiasts who explained how these rad cameras link to fashion, nostalgia and aesthetic trends, taking us deeper into why digicams have such a cult following. snap by Ali O'Keefe

ALI O'KEEFE
How did you get started using digicams? I weirdly fell down the cheap digicam rabbit hole via a pricey luxury camera: the Leica M240. It was already nine years old when I bought it, but I wanted an accessible way into a system I couldn't really afford. Once I used it, I was really surprised by how well the images held up and wondered how far back I could go in camera time while still getting an acceptable level of quality.

I sold the M240 for the first digital Leica, the M8. That launched me head-first into an obsession with vintage digital cameras as I kept seeking out cheaper and more obscure options. I realised that at the core of all the cameras I loved best was the CCD sensor, which rendered images with a character and colour that I'd found lacking in the clinically perfect cameras of today.snap by Ali O'Keefe

You host the popular YouTube channel, One Month Two Cameras. Tell us a bit about what the videos entail and your #nobadcameras ethos. The channel started as a personal project to help me evaluate what I was looking for in these old digital cameras, and from the photographic experience more broadly. I would spend two weeks deep-diving into the camera, sometimes painfully forcing myself into the limitations of old tech to see how those limitations could generate the creative inspiration I felt I had lost. And it worked! My photographic passion came raging back and #nobadcameras was born as I discovered that my creative limitations had nothing to do with the camera in my hands and everything to do with the challenge of doing more with less.snap by Sofi Lee

SOFI LEE
How did you get started using digicams? Like a lot of people, I first used digicams when they were current – in the 2000s. Then, in 2012, I had the idea of trying to shoot with digicams when I found a Kyocera Finecam S3 at a Goodwill in Portland, Oregon. I didn't end up buying it, which I now regret, since it has become one of my favourite cameras. I revisited the idea in 2014, when I decided I wanted to explore what older digital cameras looked like.

This revisit began with a dream I had about a photo of a mountain. It had something unique and distinct about it that couldn't be captured by phones, DSLRs or film. This dream led me to the PowerShot G2, which became the Summer of G2 project. I ended up selecting the G2 over a number of other digis because of its relatively larger sensor and iconic design.

I was living in Seattle back then, where I had access to some really good thrift stores. I visited the stores nearly every day and gathered a collection of digicams. Sadly, none of the collection has survived my move to Europe, but that was nevertheless how I started my practice of using digicams.snap by Sofi Lee

You had a hand in naming a current trending aesthetic, ‘Frutiger Aero’. What is it, and how does it link with your interest in digicams? My interest in digicams doesn’t directly overlap with the Frutiger Aero aesthetic itself – most of the cameras I'm into now come from the early 2000s, which is more of the Y2K time. (There's an aesthetic-adjacent trend called Gen-X Soft Club that I think is a more representative categorisation of my interest.)

One of the main goals of technology associated with the Frutiger Aero aesthetic, in my understanding, was to bring everything together onto the internet while also adding a human element to the interface. For example, tech like SD Wi-Fi cards, digicams with Wi-Fi connectivity, detailed 'eye candy' user interfaces, touchscreen, and in-camera editing functionalities. Sony's late-2000s digis are another great example. Outside of digicams, these devices can be things like netbooks or those hefty all-in-one media computers with translucent or glossy plastic details. My interest in Frutiger Aero comes from being aware of a corporate rebrand for the first time and also an overall aesthetic paradigm shift. I was one of those few people who was incredibly excited about Windows Vista because of how it looked when it was introduced, and that sparked my interest in design.

One of the projects I worked on during my Seattle digicam era was the KIN＊WÄV project, which was about building a lifestyle around retro technology from the 2000s (which, at the time, was plentiful in second-hand markets). But in this project, I found myself resisting Frutiger Aero-era technologies because I was seeking tech that didn't have so much online connectivity. I think I was looking for a pre-Frutiger Aero vision of tech back then.

More broadly speaking, I think people's interest in digicams may correlate to any number of 2000s aesthetics revivals, including indie sleaze, Y2K, McBling, and so on. I don't personally consider my draw to digicams as being directly related to an aesthetic, but because I'm fascinated by them as challenging and experimental tools. I think I'm closer to my original intrigue now: looking for that elusive mountain from a dream.snap by Ameena Faruki

AMEENA FARUKI
How did you get started using digicams? I discovered digicam.love around five years ago after I was already two years deep into studying photography and got a cute rounded green Fuji off of eBay. In the beginning, I was a lot more intrigued by digicams as a piece of design rather than a camera, but that changed once I eased more into the habit of actually using them.snap by Ameena Faruki

Your work comes from an experimental place – how do digicams aid in creating your art? I like playing with the concept of obsolescence (in technological and other forms), and the associations that personally arise with it: anxiety and a mundane horror. This exploration shows up thematically in my art and in the specific tools I choose to create it with, including digicams, super 8, CRT TVs, and discontinued perfume, among others. I remain most loyal to (and excited by) digicams because, of all the old-school mediums I’ve used, they truly feel like the one that is inevitably tumbling towards obsolescence. It feels special to form a bond with this incredibly finicky camera that will never again be marketable or desirable because its producers moved on to bigger things long ago. Unlike with film, there’s no incentive to bring back production or to keep providing technical support for early digital cameras. So, once your digicam dies – and it will die soon – it’s gone. Once all of them die, it’s over.

There is also some history of experimental filmmakers and video artists rediscovering cameras that were nearing extinction in their own present time (like the PXL 2000). I consider my artistic practice, so far, to be a continuation of this niche tradition.snap by Froyo Tam

FROYO TAM
How did you get started using digicams? I started getting into digicams around the same time I started talking to Sofi Lee in 2017. We both share the same passion for digicams and would often discuss photos on Flickr that were shot with specific digicams we were looking for and wanting to shoot with.

You are dedicated to researching trends like Y2K, McBling and Indie Sleaze. How do digicams link up with these aesthetics? Digicams interlink the worlds of fashion and industrial design. My favourite in particular, the Olympus Stylus Verve, was explicitly designed to be fashion-oriented, and even debuted in a fashion show in 2004. The advertisements for the camera were also directed to emphasise its ties to fashion. Cameras were designed to be sleek, small and fashionable; the trend for electronics was to be as small and compact as possible. As such, carrying a digicam was a fashion statement. A parallel I would make would be Kodak’s Beau Brownies – cameras explicitly designed in an art-deco style to fit in households in the 1930s.