Keita Suzuki leads a group of young analogue photography fans around Kamakura, a coastal city near Tokyo, stopping to snap pastel-coloured hydrangeas with bulky vintage film cameras. The participants later share their retro-looking photos online, in a trend a top Japanese camera brand is tapping into with its first new film model in more than two decades. Instead of pressing a smartphone button, more young people “want to experience the original act of taking a photograph: winding the film up, looking through the viewfinder and releasing the shutter”, Suzuki says.
One of the beautiful aspects of film photography is that, with limited physical film, one must think carefully about which memories to “lock in” to each photograph, he adds. Suzuki, who advertises his tours on social media, has seen growing interest from teens and people in their twenties eager to load 35mm film into a camera and take it to be developed for the first time. Yuriko Yamada was one of around 20 participants on a recent photography tour.
“Digital photos are clear and clean, but film ones have faint, soft colours, which I prefer,” the 34-year-old says. “It takes time to see the final product, but I really enjoy the process. It feels nostalgic,” she adds.
Japan’s biggest camera brands stopped making analogue models in the 2000s as digital ones began to dominate the market. Countless camera sellers in Japan’s big cities have since stepped up to fill the void, refurbishing old models for a new generation of analogue enthusiasts. Despite the surge in popularity, many of those on Suzuki’s photo tour say they find it difficult to repair their old cameras because parts for them are no longer produced.
Pentax launched its new 17 model – its first analogue camera in 21 years – in Europe and the United States in June, and in Japan this month, to meet rising demand. It sells for US$500 (HK$3,900). The camera, which has a classic black appearance, takes half-frame photos, meaning a 24-exposure film yields 48 shots, which are portrait in orientation.
Such is the camera’s popularity in Japan that manufacturer Ricoh Imaging Company announced it to be sold out before it was even released, thanks to an unexpectedly high number of pre-orders. Product planner and designer Takeo Suzuki (also known as TKO) – a revered figure among photography fans – said Ricoh had been “surprised” by the “huge” global response. Plans to release a new analogue camera were hatched around 2020, but were not easy to realise.
“This was a completely new project,” Takeo Suzuki says. “There were so many hurdles, but we received a lot of support from many people.” Pentax engineers used archive drawings of past cameras, some on paper, to make manual winders and other analogue technology.
But they struggled, so the company asked retired colleagues to come back to help. “They taught us tips and tricks that were not on the blueprints but were really recipes in the engineer’s head,” Takeo Suzuki says. By doing so, they “revived the old technology little by little”.
Instant and disposable film cameras made by Ricoh’s rival Fujifilm have also become popular as the trend for sharing old-fashioned photos on social media grows. Sales of the palm-sized Instax, launched in 1998 as a competitor to Polaroid, stagnated for several years in the 2000s because of the shift to digital cameras. But the camera is on the rise again thanks in part to its expanded range, which includes sleek, classic designs made to appeal to men and older customers, Fujifilm says.
“People enjoy prints as a communication tool because they spark conversations,” says Ryuichiro Takai, the senior Fujifilm manager in charge of Instax. Young customers at Popeye Camera, a specialist film photography shop in Tokyo’s Jiyugaoka neighbourhood, seem to agree. Yoshinobu Ishikawa took over the family business in 2000, when the rise of digital cameras had nearly forced the shop to close.
Back then, “young people found it difficult to enter” as mostly older male customers would be having “intimidating, technical conversations” with staff, he says. But now Ishikawa actively courts them with fun items such as stickers to decorate photos and leather camera straps, as well as a custom developing service in which he speaks to customers about the style they want. “Young people see film photography shared on social media, and they want to try it themselves,” he says.
Yamada, the photo tour participant, says she feels “more and more into film photography”. “It’s inconvenient, but I feel it’s something new.”.
