Keita Suzuki leads a group of young analogue photography fans around a coastal city in Japan, stopping to snap pastel hydrangea blooms with bulky vintage film cameras.
The participants later share their lush retro-looking snaps online — a trend a top Japanese camera brand wants to capture with its first new film model in two decades.
Instead of pressing a smartphone button, more and more young people “want to experience the original act of taking a photograph: winding the film up, looking through the viewfinder and releasing the shutter”, Suzuki said.
Photo: AFP
Another “beauty” of film photography is that with limited physical film, you must think carefully about which memories to “lock in” to each photograph, he said.
Suzuki advertises his tours on social media and has seen a growing interest from teens and 20-somethings loading 35mm film and taking it to be developed for the first time.
Yuriko Yamada was one of around 20 people who joined a recent gathering in Kamakura near Tokyo.
“Digital photos are clear and clean, but film ones have faint, soft colors, which I prefer,” the 34-year-old said.
“It takes time to see the final product, but I really enjoy the process,” she added. “It feels nostalgic.”
Japan’s biggest camera brands stopped making analogue film models in the 2000s as digital ones became dominant.
Countless camera sellers in Japan’s big cities have since stepped up to fill the void, refurbishing old models for a new generation of analogue enthusiasts. Despite the surge in popularity, many of those on the photo tour said they still find it difficult to repair their old cameras because the parts are no longer being produced.
‘MANY HURDLES’
To meet rising demand from new film fans, the US$500 Pentax 17 — the brand’s first analogue model in 21 years — was launched in Europe and the US last month, and Japan this month.
The camera has a classic black appearance but takes half-frame photos, meaning a 24-exposure film yields 48 shots, which are portrait-orientated like phone photos.
It has been so popular in Japan that pre-orders sold out, according to manufacturer Ricoh Imaging Company.
Product planner and designer Takeo Suzuki, nicknamed TKO — a revered figure among photography fans — said Ricoh had been “surprised” by the “huge” global response.
Plans to release a new analogue camera were hatched around 2020, but weren’t easy to realize.
“This was a completely new project, so it was like groping in the dark,” Suzuki said.
“There were so many hurdles, but we received a lot of support from many people.”
Pentax engineers used archive drawings of past cameras, some on paper, to try and make manual winders and other analogue technology.
But they struggled, so the company asked retired colleagues to come back to help.
“They taught us tips and tricks that were not on the blueprints, but were really recipes in the engineer’s head,” Suzuki said.
By doing so, they “revived the old technology little by little”.
‘SPARK CONVERSATIONS’
Instant and disposable film cameras made by Ricoh’s rival Fujifilm have also become popular as the trend for sharing old-fashioned photos on social media grows.
Sales of the palm-sized Instax, launched in 1998 as a competitor to Polaroid, stagnated for several years in the 2000s due to the shift to digital cameras.
But they are rising again in part thanks to an expanded range including sleek, classic designs made to appeal to men and older customers, the company says.
“People enjoy prints as a communication tool, because they spark conversations,” said senior Fujifilm manager Ryuichiro Takai, who is responsible for the Instax business.
Young customers at Popeye Camera, a specialist film photography shop in Tokyo’s Jiyugaoka district, seem to agree.
Yoshinobu Ishikawa took over the family business in 2000, when the rise of digital cameras had nearly forced the shop’s closure.
Back then, “young people found it difficult to enter” as mostly older male customers would be having “intimidating, technical conversations” with staff, he said.
But now Ishikawa actively courts them with fun items such as stickers to decorate photos and leather camera straps, as well as a custom developing service — speaking to customers beforehand about the style they want.
“Young people see film photography shared on social media, and they want to try it themselves,” he said.
Yamada, the photo tour participant, says she feels “more and more into film photography”.
“It’s inconvenient, but I feel it’s something new.”
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property
RSS