It's official, vintage digital compacts are trending (Petapixel)

It is funny to me that digital p&s cameras are cool now simply because they are vintage. They were not that cool the first time.
 
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I have an old late 1990's era Agfa ePhoto 1280 lying around here somewhere. It runs on 4x AA batteries and outputs a whopping 1 megapixels. Max res. is 1024 x 768. Kind of a cool form factor though.

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Good to know, I guess. I need to pull out my later brother in law's Nikon CoolPix -- can't recall the model number but it's the one with the lens section that swivels separately from the grip and shutter release. (If it even works now, that is.)
 
Until a few months ago, Canon Powershot SD1000 / IXY 10 was ~20 USD for a nice example, while Fujifilm Finepix F30, F31FD, X10 and X20 continue to command some pretty fancy prices. Back in the day, I bought the Canon for $150 from an office-supply store, good times.
 
Is the attraction of old digital cameras that they slow you down? Is it the anticipation of having to wait to see your photos until the compact flash reader you had to order off eBay arrives? Is it the aesthetic of the 1MB image? Or, as the article stated, is it the authenticity of the images from old digital cameras? Or perhaps is it the fact that the people using old digital cameras are all celebrities you have never heard of?
 
My first digital camera was the Canon S45 in 2002, a 3.8mp camera with 35mm wide end, 3.6x zoom and a lousy 15fps 360p video mode that last for three minutes. It was, however, capable of raw capture, something I never used in the day of highly expensive CF cards. The S45 is still functioning, believe it or not. It cost close to AUD $900 twenty years ago! In today's money, that's $1350. Think of what kind of digital camera you can now buy for AUD $1350, a Panasonic LX100 II, a Sony RX100 VI, a Fuji X-E4 and lens. But in 2002, the S45 was the bomb.

I carried it everywhere and it was the start of my life's work. I don't say that lightly, either. Looking back at the images, I'm surprised at how clean the base ISO images were, and the colours were particularly pleasant and natural. The S45 was followed by the S70, Fuji F30, Canon G7, G10, S90, Ricoh GRD III, Sigma DP1... My formative photographic years were spent with these 'vintage' digital cameras and I still carry a Panasonic LX10 and Sony RX0 when not carrying something bigger. I even bring out the Sigma DP1 a few times a year. It's funny how these old cameras are becoming trendy now.
 
This part is especially funny:

21-year-old Zoe Nazarian, who uses a Canon S100, tells PetaPixel “I love the fact that when you take the picture you can’t immediately post it to social media. There’s something so refreshing about taking a picture and waiting.”

She adds “I also love the ‘lower quality’ and grainy look that my camera gives compared to my iPhone.”

Isn't this the same train of thought associated with film? My Samsung Note 8 isn't a slouch for photo quality, but still doesn't quite have the quality/colour of the jpegs from my old Canon S45 in bright daylight.
 
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