The earliest camera phones came with megapixel counts that required a decimal point. But as modern camera phones are surpassing the triple-digit megapixel mark, one camera store in Japan has noticed a trend: the low-resolution compact cameras from two decades ago are suddenly in high demand.
A used camera store chain in Japan, Five Star Camera, has such a large selection of older cameras – and, in particular, CCD-sensor-based compact cameras – that the store says around 90% of its customers come from overseas.
But a recent interview with the store’s representatives highlights a few key trends in the used camera industry – especially the dominance of early 2000s compacts, which have become so popular that some now sell for 400% their original price.
“Among compact digital cameras, models equipped with CCD sensors of around 5 to 7 megapixels are particularly popular,” Ryoya Hayakawa, the manager for the Nishi-Shinjuku branch of Five Star Camera, told Japanese publication DC Watch (translated by Google).
“Their grainy image quality is favored as a retro style that iPhones can't replicate. However, there's a tendency towards prioritizing looks over specifications, a trend often referred to as the ‘Y2K style.’”
While early 2000s digital compact cameras have been trending for a few years now, the interview highlights a key reason behind the trend: “Looks over specifications.”
The demand for 20-year-old compact cameras is about getting a certain look to the images. Digital cameras have now largely moved away from CCD sensors to CMOS, but the older sensor format is particularly well known for its color rendering.
Whether or not CCD sensors deliver a more “film-like” look is a highly debated topic among photographers, but Y2K-era cameras in themselves have a unique retro look: the lower-resolution files, early digital color science and cheaper lenses inside basic point-and-shoots create a certain quality.
That was often paired with a powerful direct flash that, in itself, also carries a retro vibe.
Their grainy image quality is favored as a retro style that iPhones can't replicate. However, there's a tendency towards prioritizing looks over specifications, a trend often referred to as the ‘Y2K style’”
Ryoya Hayakawa, Five Star Camera
The drive ”backwards” towards less perfect, low-tech cameras is an interesting turn as digital photography reaches exceedingly advanced capabilities with high resolution, global shutters, and faster frame rates.
The trend towards older cameras highlights the fact that the value in a photograph is often not the technical quality but the memory itself.
Yet there is a downside to the continued trend towards using old compact cameras: price. Five Star Camera noted that some models are going for four times their original price, such as early Ricoh GR series cameras.
The interview echoes a previous report from another camera store in Japan, Komehyo, that hinted the demand for used compact cameras has increased five times over what the market looked like five to six years ago.
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