My six-year-old has a cheap Bluey-themed digital camera, and it has been great for capturing things from their perspective and starting to learn a bit about photography without just being glued to a phone… but the quality is BAD. Like, worse than 20-year-old digital point and shoot cameras bad.
Sooooo I have started down the rabbit hole of “vintage” (seriously?) “digicams” (really?).
My partner heard of the Camp Snap camera which is a new camera made specifically to emulate a disposable point and shoot experience for kids at camps, and explicitly doesn’t have a screen which I find neat—but reviews are mixed and it feels weird to buy a newly-produced thing when surely there are a bunch of old digital cameras sitting around at thrift shops… right?
I visited every thrift shop within a 30-min drive of my house and found one… which didn’t work. 😭
Following that, I turned to eBay and YouTube. Wow, this is like a whole… thing. People get really into talking about and collecting and debating what the best digicams are. I just wanted a slightly nicer camera for my kid!!
Well, after way too much late night ebaying and a couple of auction snipes, I scored myself TWO digital cameras for around $20 each, coincidentally both from 2009: Samsung SL30 and Sony Cyber Shot DSC-S930. And they work really well so far!
What’s most wild to me is how it seems like every time a YouTuber posts a video about an old camera they scored or particularly like, the resale price for that model just shoots up. These are not some ultra-rare, super unique things as far as I can tell; it’s all based on vibes and subjective aesthetic of the old (often kind of bad) sensors. But people apparently watch that video and then go and try to get that exact model. 🤷
I’ll have to play with these a bit more and intentionally go take some photos, but so far so good around the house. 😁 They serve the purpose I want, and even I probably will lean on my phone a little bit less now that I have my choice of a tiny pocketable camera. We’ll see!
Cassidy James 
Corbin Davenport