I’ve recently been having a play with the OM System OM-3, a lovely looking mirrorless digital camera with a satisfyingly tactile operation. But one that takes as its inspiration an analogue SLR from the former Olympus some four decades earlier. And prior to that the same manufacturer was re-imagining its own analogue PEN series from the 1960s. It’s not alone of course. While Fujifilm doesn’t have quite the same 100 years of heritage in creating cameras to draw on, its X series of mirrorless models are well loved for their retro looks and rangefinder-like handling. Subconsciously, perhaps, such classic designs suggest stability and durability. While ‘they don’t make them like they used to’ is a well-worn adage, it’s no longer true. Pretty much across the board, camera manufactures *are* making them like they used to! See also the Nikon Zfc and Zf.
The question I’ve been mulling over is, are such releases a case of resting on past laurels, a shortage of ideas, laziness, or simply giving the public what they want?
The people with the money to buy such premium-priced retro-styled cameras are mostly in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Manufacturers revisiting the past is a short cut to creating an immediate flicker of recognition with such age groups, with minimal marketing spend required. My parents long kept an Olympus OM SLR in the back of their wardrobe, and I suspect those of many in this demographic did too. I’ve lived long enough to see the 110-film camera I owned at age ten – which even at that age I thought took crappy pictures – make a deluxe comeback as the grandly named Lomomatic 110 Camera & Flash Bellagio under the Lomography brand.
Will the short-lived APS – Advanced Photo System – film format, introduced in 1996 just before it was rudely swept aside by an avalanche of early digital compacts, be next for a comeback? Did it live long enough for sufficient fond memories to have been formed? I still have residual love for Canon’s Elph, a circular APS contraption known in some territories as the ‘Arancia’; eccentrically and humorously designed to resemble an orange. Nostalgia is seductive.
But, as in life, is constantly looking back stopping us moving forward? Or re-booting past successes a way to disguise the fact that innovation as regards digital cameras, beyond AI enhancing subject recognition, has slowed in the past decade, and digital cameras are no longer seen as the exciting must-haves they were early to mid-2000s?
The past is, as they say, another country. Given the mess both the elected and unelected have made of the present, it’s no surprise that many of us would wish to live there.
Plus, in a world in which personal decision and action feels like it’s been incrementally taken from us, perhaps another level to retro-styled cameras’ appeal is that via their myriad manual dials, switches and levers, we can finally, decisively, *actually* take back control.
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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
