Young photographers help film cameras find a new market

Film photography is drawing a younger audience after years in which digital cameras and smartphones pushed analog tools to the margins. Market reports, surveys and photography educators point to Gen Z and younger millennials as a major force behind renewed demand for film cameras, disposable cameras and darkroom-era practices.

Rotem Rozental, a lecturer in critical studies at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design, wrote in The Conversation that the shift appears tied to young people’s desire for more tangible forms of art and social connection. Rozental also serves as executive director and chief curator of the Los Angeles Center of Photography.

A young user base returns to film

Film photography uses photographic film and chemical processing, a method that lost ground as digital tools came to dominate photography. Polaroid and Kodak, once central companies in consumer photography, contracted sharply from their peaks, while many school darkrooms were replaced by digital labs, according to Rozental.

Recent figures suggest analog photography has gained new momentum. MarketReportsWorld reported that in 2025, 35% of the world’s 42 million active film camera users were ages 18 to 30. The same account said online searches for analog photography rose 41% in the prior year.

Cognitive Market Research has reported steady growth in disposable camera sales since 2023. PetaPixel described 2024 as film’s strongest year in decades, citing new film camera releases and the return of older models by major brands. Ilford Photo’s 2024 survey of film photographers found that more than 30% of respondents were ages 25 to 34.

Rozental said she has seen the shift among undergraduate art and design students. In her classes, she wrote, some students this year discussed printed photographs, physical albums, postcards, letters and photographs displayed on bedroom walls.

Social spaces around analog media

Rozental argues that interest in film photography is partly a response to lives shaped by screens, social media and the pandemic-era move to online interaction. She cited Gallup polling from 2023 that found 51% of American teenagers spent at least four hours a day on social media.

She connects the film revival to the sociological idea of a “third place,” a term Ray Oldenburg used in his 1989 book “The Great Good Place” for social spaces outside home and work. Rozental wrote that analog photography can create those spaces through classes, events, camera walks and shared rituals around making and printing images.

One example came in April 2026, when the Los Angeles Center of Photography organized the first AnalogCon in Los Angeles. According to Rozental, the two-day event brought together vendors, industry figures, artists and teachers for exhibitions, panels, demonstrations and guided photography tours in Little Tokyo.

The film photography revival fits a wider return to physical media among younger consumers, according to Rozental. The Recording Industry Association of America reported that streaming accounted for 82% of recorded music revenue, while Forbes reported U.S. vinyl sales crossed $1 billion in 2025 after more than a decade of growth.

WUSF reported that nearly 60% of Gen Z consumers are buying records. Rozental also pointed to renewed interest in VHS tapes, VCRs and video rental shops such as Be Kind Video and Videotheque in California as examples of physical media becoming social experiences as well as consumer products.

For film photographers, the appeal includes limits that digital photography avoids: loading film, choosing shots carefully and waiting for prints. Rozental wrote that those practices offer young users a more deliberate and physical relationship with images than algorithm-driven feeds.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.