Point-and-shoot digital cameras are having a moment, again

Alexis Ramlall, a Mississauga, Ont.-based digital producer, got her first point-and-shoot camera more than 15 years ago. “I think it was for my 11th or 12th birthday,” she says. “It was a pink Sony Cybershot and it was so cute. I took it everywhere.”

Ramlall eventually got a smartphone, which had its own built-in camera. As for her trusty Cybershot? “I didn’t really need it anymore.”

That was, until two or three years ago.

Ramlall saw lots of people posting online about bringing back their point-and-shoot digital cameras. She found hers and bought a new battery and SD card for it. “I basically revived it from the dead,” she says. Unfortunately, it broke soon after, so she bought a newer point-and-shoot that has Bluetooth capability and can send digital photos to her phone. Many of her friends also have one, too.

They mostly use them on nights out: birthday parties, restaurants, nightclubs, et cetera. “I find that we make opportunities to go out and take pictures,” she says. “It creates its own activity. We’ll go to a pumpkin patch and we’ll take pictures. Or when we go on vacation, I really don’t need my phone at those times, so I’ll go out the entire day and I’ll just have my camera.”

Ramlall and her pals aren’t the only ones. Canon said the sales of its PowerShot point-and-shoot jumped sevenfold from 2022 to 2025. And Brian Giffin, the operations manager for Ivan’s Camera which has locations in Moncton, N.B and Charlottetown, PEI has watched the trend rise first-hand: sales of point-and-shoot cameras over a one-year period have increased 36 per cent in 2026 compared to five years ago.

Perhaps the most interesting part of digital cameras coming back into style is the demographic that’s shopping for them: “They’re in their 20s and 30s,” says Giffin.

Jonathan Baltrusaitis, a media scholar and instructor at the University of Waterloo, says he learned about the trend from his students, and that it’s not the first time he’s seen people embrace an older technology that most consider obsolete. “In this age of digital streaming there’s a surprising number of young people collecting vinyl records, for instance,” he shares. “Some have started collecting other physical media like CDs and DVDs.”

Ramlall, now 27, says the appeal for her is the ability to capture the moment without being glued to her phone. It allows her to “be fully present in the moment” without getting distracted by her phone’s text, email and social media notifications.

“We kind of grew up in a world where we were constantly getting that new tech and integrating it into our lives,” she shares. “As we got older, we started to see the negative effects of how it can distract us.” Being able to carry around a portable camera sidesteps all of that. And sure, there’s film cameras too, which Ramlall admits are cool, but the maintenance of getting film developed all the time was “a little annoying.”

Giffin also has a theory as to why the point-and-shoot camera is back in style: Gen Z have grown up in an era of increasing awareness about who has access to our personal data. “There is something to be said about taking a picture in a closed loop,” he says. “It’s not on a phone that’s always online and you’re not always aware of where that information is going.”

Baltrusaitis says part of the appeal is also the experience of using the technology itself; the slight inconvenience of the device is the point. “Taking pictures on a smartphone is easy,” he says. “But that ease and ubiquity can also make photography seem mundane… Choosing to use an old digital camera leads to a different process and experience, and a different ‘look’ in the images you produce.”

Is the trend here to stay? Baltrusaitis admits some people may “just be latching onto a fad,” but many are not. “If you have to be more mindful about the process of taking a picture, that can make the act feel more significant. And that’s a kind of mindfulness. Slowing down and being more deliberate about something can feel good.”

As for Ramlall? “I always have it in my bag,” she says. “It feels special to use it.”