A couple of years ago, as summer camps began to ban screens, a company called Camp Snap began to sell a screen-free camera that children could take along. The point-and-shoot had the vibes of a 1990s Kodak: just a viewfinder, a flash and no way to see the photos until the camera was hooked up to a computer.
What the company didn't see coming was the demand from adults.
"All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a lot of Gen Z, millennial demographic started buying them," says Camp Snap President Trevor George. "We realized very quickly that, OK, this is way beyond kids at summer camp."
Perhaps it was only a matter of time after the cool kids put on low-rise jeans like Britney Spears that photo trends would cycle around too. But they come also as a whiplash —against the era of the smartphone.
Digicams have flooded bars, music venues, festivals and family gatherings. Canon told NPR that sales of the PowerShot, its renowned point-and-shoot, jumped nearly sevenfold from 2022 to 2025. Camp Snap says its sales more than doubled in the past year.
Last year, Camp Snap launched a screen-free retro camcorder too, and it showed up in the hands of celebrities including Selena Gomez and Joe Jonas. One was spotted at Taylor Swift's wedding.
A fresh look in the sea of smartphone photos
Jaden Williams, 16, first picked up a point-and-shoot in his yearbook class. The photos "felt more genuine," he says. Soon enough, he was noticing digicams all over TikTok and among friends. Last month, he requested — and received — one for his birthday. He uses it alongside his phone.
"If I'm about to take pictures of food or something, then I might use my phone," says Williams, from North Carolina. "But if I'm out with friends or at a party, I might use the camera for a more, like, warm vibe."
The turn-of-the-millennium digital photo is hard to mistake: a bit grainy, sometimes fuzzy, overexposed in the center with a blinding flash, often date-stamped in red or orange. A nostalgic haze gives photos the feel of an instant memory.
"The brightness and also the crispness of the photo — but having that blur and grain somehow added in as well — makes the photos look very flattering," says Katie Coyne, 24, from New York.
She'd bought a digital camera for a safari vacation but lately has lent it to her younger sister, Gwen Coyne, who lives in Philadelphia. They both find the vintage blur refreshing in the sea of hyper-sharp smartphone photos.
"I feel like iPhone cameras look just so ... sometimes it looks a little too real," says Gwen. She recently brought the digicam on a trip, where she photographed palm trees against the sky and the ocean. "And I don't really know how to put it into words, but it gave such a vacation vibe."
The sisters think that for the vast majority of people on social media, the digicam is purely a trendy aesthetic. First came the 1970s-style Instagram filters, then the revival of Polaroid-style photos, now this.
But for many people, it's also a rebellion against their smartphones.
Part of the great disconnection
Christina Berkett, 34, has been carrying her point-and-shoot to avoid her phone.
"I think you get caught up in the digital world, where — OK, I'm pulling out my phone to take a photo and then I see a notification or I'm checking my email," says Berkett, from New Jersey.
And with a digital camera? "You put it in your bag, you don't think about it, and then at the end of the night, you go through all the photos and kind of relive that moment."
This makes the digicam trend a small part of a growing movement of people un-phoning or de-phoning their lives. Camp Snap's George sees it as an analog reboot after decades of internet-connected everything, from watches to washing machines. eBay told NPR that it's seeing a surge of searches for old-school tech like iPods, CDs and Walkmans.
Berkett, who's a wedding photographer, says couples are printing real-world photo albums. They still request iPhone video footage for social media content, but many also pay extra for her to film ceremonies or speeches with an old-school camcorder — like she's someone's aunt, just a guest.
"They want it to feel like it's a home video," Berkett says. "I don't think they want something that's grainy. I think they want something to feel real."
She does hold the camcorder differently from how her parents once did when they made home videos. The device sits on her palm flipped to its side, so that the video Berkett films is vertical rather than horizontal — because most people will still watch it on their smartphone.
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