Low Resolution, High Sentiment: The Return of Digital Cameras on Campus

It’s a Saturday night at Candid, and my friend asks if I want a picture. I smile and say yes, expecting her to pull out her phone and snap a quick shot. Instead, she pulls out a small, shiny silver camera. Its real name? A Canon PowerShot, circa 2007 (that’s the same age as the freshmen this year). My friend clicks the flash on and I smile, and she tells me she will send me the downloaded photos tomorrow.  

This exact scene is now a common occurrence, and when I scroll through Instagram digital camera photos compose half of the photo dumps. Small yellow letters reading off the date at the bottom of the photo and the battery symbol at the top, both key features of a digital camera flick. Yet we just entered a new year, marking almost 20 years since the birth of these cameras – so why are they everywhere? Is this just another trend? Or is the resurgence of digital cameras on campus an intentional throwback to an earlier, more digitally simple time? 

Once I came to the realization that digital cameras were making a comeback, I started to notice them at the Inn, at Spin (also known as Oak Manor), and even Dooly’s. First, I had to ask the logical question: why digital cameras if the modern smartphones photo quality is unmatched? To investigate I asked to borrow my mom’s digital camera (from when I was about 2 years old). In order to understand exactly why these little vintage devices were coming back, I took the camera with me on a night out, where I began to see some of the appeal. While the shots were nowhere near my phone’s camera quality, they had something else going for them. Instead of perfect quality, they had a filtered element that made them appear as though they were memories. Did they have high resolution? No. But what they did have was the key factor: nostalgia. After downloading the photos off the camera, I took a closer look and found they looked exactly like the slightly grainy pictures from my childhood. I had initially thought that the lack of clarity to the photos were a downside, but I was beginning to see how these cameras were in a way, comforting. 

The digital camera revamp was not due to camera quality, but instead because the photos were exactly the kind of look people were going for. Yet is it only nostalgia that has caused StFX students to hop on the digital camera bandwagon? It is clear that the camera is well loved for its aesthetic reasons, but could it also have something to do with the fact that the cameras only has one use: to take photos? It doesn’t connect to Instagram or TikTok but instead takes the manual process of uploading photos to share with friends. Could students actually be trying to disconnect and ‘unplug’? I turned to my friend, fellow second-year student Lauren Anderson, who had initially piqued my attention with her 2007 digital camera. She explained how her camera, one that she had gotten when she was eight or nine years old, as a limited number of photos can take (around 14-22). Lauren illustrated how it allowed her to engage more with her camera and less with her phone, “I can’t take a million photos and sort through the best ones to post, it’s always just one photo that makes the moment feel more authentic.” These cameras, then, are for students more than an aesthetic, but a way to be more authentic and engaged with what they are experiencing. It appears as though digital cameras are a trend that is inspiring students to look up at what’s around them, by taking a step into the past. 

Digital cameras, nearly as old as the students on campus, seem to be a trend that is sticking with the student body. From the nostalgia the photos generate, to the appeal of the simplicity and the aesthetic and creative control they offer, it appears as if digital cameras are here to stay. As 2026 begins it looks like StFX is taking a step back to a less technically developed time, and I cannot wait to see how this will manifest beyond the flash of a camera.