The 2000s called. They want their digital camera back
npr.orgThe Fuji Half-frame digital. It's in the space of the Olympus Trip-35, emulating a half-frame effect, so you get 72 shots on a 36 reel. Obviously this is synthetically overlaid on the digital reality but it has some very fundamental qualities aligned closely to fixed focus fixed lens camera experience and Fuji's digital film emulation (about 6 different types) is very good. They even have "out of date" options to get the nasty red blurry blob effect we used to suffer on film kept in the car glovebox.
Not cheap mind you. https://fujifilm-houseofphotography.com.au/pages/fujifilm-x-...
A critique says they should have put more resistance into the lever, made the "wind on" experience better.
I do like the idea of focused intentional hardware. Yes, it doesn't have the convenience of smart phones but it doesn't mean you have to give them up just to have a digital camera. Both have their place.
I also really like the image quality on a lot of dedicated digital cams, I suspect it is because they don't have to have the sensor and lens crushed into a 9mm thick device. That can do a lot more for image quality.
I think picture quality on my droidX is better than the smoothed out filtering on current cameras since 2018 or so.
The old ones did compression but nothing like this awful mess current cameras do.
I looked at pictures from droidX era and was amazed how clear zoomed-in faces were.
Now those older cams needed better light but that is a different issue.
The older pics were smaller in MBs too!
And in another thread we're trying to figure out why GoPro is dying. Amazing.