Gen Z ditching smartphones for point and shoot cameras as vintage tech makes a comeback: ‘Gives off a certain vibe’

It’s giving old school.

Gen Z shutterbugs are turning their back on smartphones — and picking up their parents’ point and shoot cameras instead.

The latest and hottest phone photo tech is losing its cool at a time when the younger crowd finds itself increasingly fascinated by all things vintage — from thrifted clothing and consignment designer gear to vinyl records and cassette tapes .

“Everyone’s photos kind of look the same on social media and have for many years, even with quality improving with every iPhone,” Courtney June, 24, told Fast Company .

“A camera from 2007 gives off a certain vibe that something like an iPhone can’t produce,” the digital camera fan from Pennsylvania said.

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At the Paris Olympics, soccer star Megan Rapinoe was seen snapping pics with a disposable camera in the stands, while model Alexa Chung recently showed off her point and shoot on Instagram.

“It” girls Bella Hadid and Emma Chamberlain are also proponents of the retro tech, while “The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri brought hers to the Emmys.

Even on TikTok, creators laud digital cameras — like the Canon G7X — as superior to the iPhone, as influencers like Alix Earle have cosigned the trend on their picture perfect social media feeds.

In fact, some models are so popular that they haven’t been available to purchase for months, forcing Zoomers to scour secondhand sites to find one.

And the point and shoot obsession has also spurred a film frenzy.

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The Guardian reports that Kodak saw demand for film double in recent years, while Harman, the only UK manufacturer of 35 mm film, announced a multi-million dollar investment into new product as the camera craze surges.

And, this summer, the Pentax 17 was released — the first 35mm film camera to be produced by a major company in more than two decades.

According to Paul McKay, the co-founder of the UK-based film product distributor Analogue Wonderland, Pentax “had to bring engineers back out of retirement … to teach younger engineers,” he told the outlet.

In the age of rapidly developing technology — namely, photography equipment created to produce sharp, vibrant and essentially flawless images — it seems contradictory to painstakingly develop grainy film or snap imperfect pictures.

But that’s part of the allure.

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“Even the mistakes are romantic — the light leaks on the first few frames of a new roll, red-eye and grain,” Emily Dinsdale, the arts and photography editor at Dazed, told The Guardian .

With the proliferation of AI-generated or deceivingly altered images , she believes that people trust film camera more than digital art.

“It comes back to the idea of pictures on our phones not being as special as pictures taken on film,” she said, adding that “digital photography and smartphones have really changed the currency of images.”

In a recent survey conducted by McKay he found that the most common reason for ditching digital entirely was that it allowed the person behind the camera to slow down.

“There’s a mindfulness ,” he explained. “People talk about mental health a lot in this generation when they talk about film photography.”

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