Earlier this year, my younger sister in Jamaica texted me, frantically begging me to help her source a compact film camera in Japan. As ¡°nostalgia core¡± grips Gen Z, social media fills with hashtags such as #filmisnotdead, and influencers, models and celebrities post grainy film photos to their feeds, the thought occurred to me: Is film getting a new lease on life?
Not quite, says Bellamy Hunt, owner of Tokyo-based rare and premium photography shop .
¡°High-end cameras are a steady business, but it¡¯s often harder to find mid- and lower-end cameras,¡± says Hunt, 47. He says overseas shop owners often reach out for help sourcing old film cameras in Japan because of their finite numbers in the wild. But if Japan¡¯s film cameras are so hard to find, what is everyone shooting with? John Sypal, a film photographer living in Japan since 2005, says film¡¯s recent resurgence has led to a hodgepodge landscape.
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