The compact camera is back… Why 2.4 million people are discovering that real buttons are outpacing smartphones in 2026

For the first time in quite a while there are a couple of fixed-lens compact cameras featured in the news pages of Australian Camera magazine. Compact cameras, by definition of course, also include models such as Sony’s RX1 III and the Fujifilm X100VI – but here we’re talking about the more traditional idea of a compact camera… truly compact, pocket-sized, point-and-shoot operation if you want it, and comparatively affordable.

In case you’ve missed it, the point-and-shoot camera is back and sales have been steadily on the rise for nearly a year or so now. Nobody is really quite sure what triggered the revival (although social media will undoubtedly be involved somehow), but compacts are cool again and particularly with a demographic that has probably never used one before. For some – notably younger women – the smartphone is now so yesterday and real cameras are being preferred for photography.

The numbers will never be anything like they were during the golden years of 35mm film compacts and the first few of generations of digital models, but they’re growing in a way that can’t be ignored. According to the Japanese Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA), around 9.4 million cameras were shipped worldwide in 2025, and 2.4 million of these were point-and-shoots with a fixed lens. This represents the highest number of compact camera shipments since 2021.

It’s caught a few camera-makers napping, but others have been making hay – namely those that had, for one reason or another, kept compact cameras in the inventory. The biggest success story is Canon’s PowerShot G7X Mark III which was launched in July 2019 and found enough buyers through the drought years to stay on the books. Then… boom!… during the first half of 2025 you couldn’t get one for love nor money (and used prices went through the roof). Canon subsequently upped production and, by August, the G7 X III was topping the sales charts in Japan which, in the process, helped increase the brand’s market share to over 25 percent. Now there’s a limited edition model – ostensibly to celebrate 30 years of the PowerShot line – which is selling out fast.

Also sitting pretty is Ricoh with its GR III APS-C compact camera models and now the well-timed GR IV. The lineage dates back to 1994 and the original 35mm R1, but it was the higher-end GR1 from 1997 which gained cult status and it’s been maintained with every model since, seamlessly carrying over into the digital era and staying in production all this time.

Leica’s Panasonic-sourced D-Lux line – the first model introduced in 2003 – has also been maintained through the lean years so the current D-Lux 8 with its Micro Four Thirds size sensor now looks like a highly-desirable package even if it is a bit on the pricey side.

Both Canon’s higher-end PowerShots – especially the G1 models – and the Ricoh GRs in both 35mm and digital flavours attracted professional photographers with their workable combination of performance and portability. In the early days of digital capture, there was nothing in between the eye-wateringly expensive (and studio-bound) capture backs for medium-format SLRs, and first digital compacts which were generally much higher-end than the film cameras. If you weren’t doing catalogue work – which made the investment in capture backs viable – you’d mostly likely make the jump to digital via a compact. The early Nikon Coolpixes, for example, were popular and the outputs good enough for a number of applications. However, I well remember quite a few photographers telling me that they’d keep these cameras out of the sight of clients and art directors as they didn’t look professional enough. That perception probably still lingers – bigger has to be better – but the reality is that the main attractions of the compact camera have appeal for both amateurs and professionals alike.

Whether the current revival will be enough to see more higher-end, enthusiast-level models similar to the Leica D-Lux 8 – a contemporary upgrade of the Canon PowerShot G1 would surely be a hit – is hard to know, especially as it’s inexpensive snap-shooters making a lot of the running at the moment (ironically putting the Kodak brand back in the spotlight). Yet with mirrorless cameras mostly moving on from the original concept of being compact, there’s a gap in the market for a fixed-lens offering which, in the current climate of increasing camera sales more generally, the more adventurous manufacturer might view as an opportunity. In the light of Fujifilm’s quirky X Half and even quirkier Instax Mini Evo Cinema, you’d have to think that, right now, anything might be possible.