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 Japan Camera Hunter.
“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.