The digicams return

Elephant Memory Systems entry №002

In recent years, the term digicam has come to indicate more than just ‘a digital camera’, as it was first used to refer to digital cameras as opposed to film cameras. Now the term also references a specific type of device: compact digital cameras produced from the late 1990s to the late 2000s, typically using older CCD sensors. This has been fuelled by a general rediscovery of the vintage, imperfect, more organic look of the photos these cameras produce.

As someone who has been into photography since the 1980s, and who has used these compact cameras when they were the latest and greatest in digital photography, this ongoing trend is more than just a fad or just another excuse to achieve originality or to look, well, trendy. And it isn’t fake nostalgia either. This type of photography brings back real memories.

The serendipity of rediscovering digicams and the digicam æsthetic as a personal endeavour slightly before this became a trend on Instagram, YouTube, and elsewhere is what essentially spared me from wasting a lot of money on 20-year-old cameras that should cost just a few bucks second-hand, but whose prices have been horribly inflated thanks to a bunch of photography ‘influencers’ babbling about ‘the film look’ these old, little CCD cameras supposedly give you.

I currently have more than 30 of these digicams, and I had a lot of fun taking street snaps around the city between 2021 and 2024. In mid-2024, however, my wife and I finally bought an apartment and for a few months were busy with everything related to buying and moving to a new home. In short, my digicam collection has mostly lain neglected for most of 2025. Further, last year my creativity in general took a hit also because of the stuff I talked about in My 2025 in review.

But during the Christmas holidays, as I finally finished reorganising hundreds of family slides to show more about my family and childhood to my current family (my wife, and her brother and sister), a renewed yearning for getting back to photography as a whole, and for dusting off my digicams again, returned in full. These days I’ve been busy recharging many camera batteries and taking out a couple of digicams each day with me as I went out and about.

The first two cameras I revived have been the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-L1 and the Olympus FE-250. The DSC-L1 is a very small, mostly metal, camera, that is rather comfortable to use despite its size. It has 4.1 megapixels and was made in 2004. The Olympus, another very pocketable camera, is from 2007 and has 8 megapixels instead.

I tried to capture the same scene with both cameras, but honestly, this is not a great sample of what these cameras can do.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-L1

Olympus FE-250

The Sony DSC-L1 is rather capable at handling difficult light (a mix of natural and artificial, like in the first photo) and has a good auto white balance (the lighting in the second photo looks very similar to what I was seeing).

The Olympus FE-250, like all the (many) Olympus cameras I own, delivers very nice colours.

The second pair of cameras I took out shooting have been the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W370 (14.1 megapixels, 2010 — above) and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77 (10.1 megapixels, 2008 — below).

That plastic tab attached to the T77’s strap is in fact a mini stylus, as the T77’s back is entirely taken up by a 3‑inch 16:9 capacitive touchscreen. The only physical controls are the shutter button, power button (you also turn the camera off/on by sliding the front panel), review button and zoom rocker.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W370

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77

The DSC-W370 cost me almost nothing, as it was part of a box of 12 assorted cameras I got on eBay for €30 or so, sold as ‘untested, spares or repairs’ — and 11 of them turned out to be working fine, either needing new batteries or chargers. This Sony just needed its charger.

The DSC-T77 was purchased at a second-hand shop for the princely sum of €12. Both purchases were made in 2021. This camera was originally available in a few colours. The promo image gives iPod vibes (credit: DPReview).

It comes in colours…

At the moment I have the third pair of digicams in my bag: the Canon PowerShot G2 (4 megapixels, 2001) and the Fujifilm FinePix E550 (Super CCD HR sensor with 6.3 megapixels, 2004). Both these cameras have taken many very good pictures in the past, and it’s been great getting back to them these days. Maybe I’ll show more sample photos in a future ‘Elephant Memory Systems’ entry.

See the EMS tag for more short-form posts of this kind. Read this entry for the origin story of this series of posts.