Here’s a question: which cameras are cool? Are mirrorless cameras cool, or do you prefer compacts? I run through the coolest brands.
I read my colleague Gavin’s piece on whether the Coolpix resurgence can make Nikon cool again, and it sent me down this rabbit hole. I think, between friends, we can admit that photography is not the coolest hobby in the world. Pixel-peeping is not cool. Chimping at your LCD is not cool. Tripods, god bless them, are not cool.
But to paraphrase a lyric from my photography-themed Smiths cover band (we’re recruiting if anyone knows a decent bass player) – some cameras are cooler than others. Some have a certain cachet, cause heads to turn, cause people to ask, ‘Excuse me, what make is your camera?’ Some cameras, dare I say it, have drip.
Not all, though. So, assuming nobody crashes through the door to stop me, I’m going to rank them. Here is my completely subjective and entirely biased rating of which camera brands are cool, and which are not, starting at the bottom.
12. Kodak
This might seem harshly low – after all, shooting a roll of Kodak Gold shot on a beach at sunset certainly feels cool. However, in terms of cameras, the Kodak brand has wilfully attached itself to a lot of plastic tat over the years, and that irreparably dilutes its swag. Plus, leveraging your near-monopoly on colour film stocks to hike the price every year is not cool at all. Bottom spot.
11. Sigma
Remember: cameras, not lenses. The baffling, cubular Sigma fp and fp L have for years sat firmly in the no-mans-land of being too weird for professionals and too expensive for amateurs. They’re so confusing, they’re almost avant-garde – close to being anti-cool in a way that makes them cool, but not quite.
The brand has evinced some minimal amount of rizz recently with the Sigma BF, a camera built around the concept of ‘beautiful foolishness’. It goes slim and minimal, turning the the box-like proportions of these cameras into something more like a selling point.
I cannot say I am fully convinced yet – but it does at least rescue Sigma from the bottom spot.
10. GoPro
GoPro cameras are obviously great – they pioneered and codified the action camera. However, the brand has this Brewdog-esque tendency to try too hard to be edgy and punk, which unfortunately is one of the least cool things you can do. Also, stuffing your app with upsells for your premium subscription is unchic. Sorry about it.
9. Panasonic Lumix
The nerdiest photography brand. Too smart for its own good – a review of a Panasonic camera will invariably include the word ‘clever’. Using 4K Photo instead of burst shooting to capture fast movement is certainly clever – but it isn’t cool.
A mean person (me) once described Lumix as ‘all substance, no style’. It’s the pocket-protector camera brand, for people who truly don’t care about being cool – which almost makes it cool. But not quite.
8. Sony
A Sony camera is a safe family car. A Sony camera is an electric razor. For pretty much every type of photographer or videographer, there’s a Sony camera that would be a sensible choice. That’s certainly commendable – but it isn’t cool. Next.
7. Nikon
As sixteen-time winner of the award for ‘camera brand with users most likely to wear driving gloves’, Nikon has a somewhat fuddy-duddy image. However, this has lent it the aura of the professional’s choice; in movies, when the writers want to convey a character as a photography expert, they tend to give them a Nikon. There’s something cool about that. Plus, the aforementioned surge of Gen Z Coolpix enthusiasts certainly hasn’t hurt.
6. Ricoh / Pentax
Tricky one. Ricoh GR cameras are definitely cool – they feel like the indie alternative to a Fuji X100, for people in the know. However, overpriced Pentax DSLRs are not cool, and I don’t think we can call DSLRs ‘retro’ yet. So, we’ll split the difference and put them exactly halfway.
5. OM System / Olympus
Another ‘split the difference’ entry. Olympus, associated with retro tech style and sophistication, will always be cool. OM System is not yet cool – too new, a bit dorky, insists on styling its name in ALL CAPS, a convention that is STUPID and I always IGNORE whenever I’m writing about IT.
4. Canon
A surprisingly high showing for the behemoth, perhaps, but I think it makes sense. Canon could be considered the Taylor Swift of the camera world – too globally popular to ever truly be cool again, but nobody’s going to think less of you for liking it.
3. Polaroid
Polaroid photos are eternally cool. So elastic in their utility and appeal that they look equally at home on a teenager’s bedroom pinboard or in an installation at the Tate. Polaroids frequently get namechecked in songs – as well as the obvious one, they’ve shown up in lyrics by Bright Eyes, Idlewild, Ladytron and plenty more, which is not something you can say about a Sony Alpha 7R.
Polaroid only loses points for the same sins as Kodak – in the wilderness years, pre-regeneration, the Polaroid name found its way onto a lot of plastic rubbish.
2. Fujifilm
‘Cool’ was basically how Fujifilm rescued itself from oblivion – it’s easy to forget what a sorry state it was in before the 2010 debut of the X100. Now, it’s the brand that blows up on TikTok every other week, because slim silver compacts with an ISO dial are cool. Film Simulations are cool in a way that ‘Creative Filters’ are not. XF lenses and their beautiful bokeh are cool.
If your company swag can survive an utter pony like the X-half, the camera that I genuinely think has caused Fujifilm to stop replying to my emails, it can survive anything.
1. Leica
You saw this coming. It’s the brand that made some of the most iconic professional film cameras that ever existed, then transferred to the digital era with dazzling élan. It’s the brand of rangefinder focusing – tricky to learn, but feels like nothing else once you master it. An iconic red dot, a mind-bogglingly sharp lens, a camera made from perfectly machined parts that if properly cared for, will keep shooting forever.
(I even think there’s something cool about slapping a new skin on a camera, getting Lenny Kravitz to sign it, and charging five figures. It’s camp. It’s arguably guerrilla class warfare. I love it. You might say it’s hypocritical for me to give this a pass while criticising Kodak for hiking film prices, but I would counter by saying: no it’s not.)
Still unconvinced? Well, let me remind you that Leica is the company that literally saved people from the Nazis by smuggling them across the border. Case closed. Leica is the coolest camera brand. Do not email me about any of this.
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk
