Ah, the disposable camera. Mainstay of our childhoods and favourite accessory of our mums on holiday. And it's easy to see why. It's inexpensive enough not to worry about, but still useful enough to bother carrying around. In its hey-day, the 27-shot classic offered a cheap alternative to film photography, and meant that everyone had the ability to take pictures. Now, despite having all the high tech gadgets we could want, it looks like the grainy shots of the disposable is poised for a second hey-day.
Like the craving for old school records, the demand for physical copies of pictures is growing fast. Instax mini cameras seem to be hitting the sweet spot between 2018 tech and retro vibes, offering an upmarket but affordable alternative to the previous polaroid camera at £69.95. In 2017, The Times reported that Fujifilm expected "to sell 7.5 million [film cameras], including Instax instant cameras - up from 6.5 million last year and 3.9 million in 2014-15."
But for me, it's all about the cheap and cheerful disposable camera. At £4.99 a pop, you're more than happy to risk its life paddling in the sea or diving into a swaying crowd at a gig – because who wants to spend their time jealously guarding a state of the art camera when you could be, you know, living?
Frankly, I don't know what I'd do without my trusty disposables. Anything expensive in my possession has a tendency to break or go missing (I'm sorry mum, it's who I am as a person), I take them everywhere (particularly where I know I’ll be drinking). Every so often old disposables will turn up, mini time capsules casually kicking about at the bottom of old bags and in the backs of drawers. When it comes to developing the pictures, it’s just a hop, skip, 16 quid and a trip to Boots later (yes ridiculous developing costs are real) and you’ll be reminded of moments that had, until now disappeared into the cobwebs of your brain. And there's no excitement quite like being handed that pale blue envelope of fresh prints.
Though I don't know why - we all know each set of photos will have at least one of the following:
Unwanted selfies:
Ten or so selfies of your little brother/ mate (which explains why the camera went missing for half an hour).
Absolute crap
Several pictures of the floor, someone’s shoes or just pitch black.
The weird ones
Just...stuff...you can’t really explain.
And of course..the golden pictures
If you’re really lucky, you’ll get a few really good ones. The real deal. Happy go lucky, priceless pictures. Pictures to plaster all over your walls and sacrifice your bedroom deposit for just so you can be forever reminded of one particular moment.
There’s also always a signature mystery arse pic, which crept through the watchful eyes of the Boots censoring staff… (Don’t worry I won’t subject you to any of those.)
Some might say there are downsides to the disposable; its capabilities extend to a flash button, a windy twisty thing which takes you to the next shot and just 27 blind images. And sure, it’s full of surprises, both good and bad. Like that time I went to Snappy Snaps with my boyfriend, only to discover a long hour later that the mystery old camera was full of pics of me and my ex - much to my current’s obvious delight.
But what might seem like drawbacks, are actually the best part. Unable to check and review your images, you’re forced to be satisfied with your blinking eyes, turning head and ugly laugh – no retakes. Limited, the pictures become sacred. What you get is physical copies (omg actual printed pics), not to mention hilarious keepsakes. You save the camera for the moments that you really, really want to keep (until you have too many cans of Red Stripe and waste the entire camera on rolling eyes and pitch black poses.)
Altogether, what you get is a bloody brilliant, real, honest, ugly, humiliating, blinking, blurry, one chance, single second version of your past life. The fact that you wouldn’t even dare to put 95% of them on social media is the best bit. Like a little telescope into your mind, you see the actual version rather than the filtered, edited, selfie, Instagram perfect version.
Fujifilm’s David Honey told the Times: “Billions of mobile images are uploaded every day. People take multiple pictures of the same shot and edit them endlessly. The result is people creating perfect images of themselves. They’re creating a fake life. People are rebelling against that.”
In this kind of culture, it’s amazing that something shitty, old and ‘disposable’ can defy that. Often, our online lives exist around filters, angles and the race for perfection, but in reality maybe what we really want is something simple, gritty and real. The disposable offers an alternative which is the unabashedly the real you. Ironically, it may be that the disposable camera is perhaps the least disposable thing of all.
