What Is a Digicam? Old Digital Cameras, Prices and Digicam vs iPhone

These are the words you will see on digicam listings and in buying guides.

• Digicam: originally a trade name for a digital camera. Today it mostly means an old compact digital camera, a discontinued point-and-shoot with a fixed lens.
• Point-and-shoot: a small camera with a built-in lens and automatic settings. The term covers film cameras too, such as the ones in our point-and-shoot film camera guide, so a digicam is a digital point-and-shoot, usually an older one.
• CCD: charge-coupled device, the sensor type common in 2000s compacts, including many Canon PowerShot and Fujifilm FinePix models. In good light, many people find CCD color more pleasing than CMOS.
• CMOS: the sensor type that has entirely replaced CCD in recent consumer cameras, because it costs less and does better at high ISO.
• Megapixels: not a measure of the look. Retro Digitals, a US digicam shop, points out that a 7MP and a 20MP camera can both use CCD sensors.
• Memory cards: many later digicams take SD cards; older ones may need CompactFlash, Memory Stick, xD-Picture Card or SmartMedia. Original SD tops out at 2GB, SDHC at 32GB and SDXC at 2TB, so check which standard a camera reads before buying a card.
• The Y2K look: NPR's description of a turn-of-the-millennium digital photo: a bit grainy, sometimes fuzzy, overexposed in the center by the flash and often date-stamped in red or orange.

A modern camera with a big sensor often does; an old digicam usually does not. RAWCraft, which makes an iPhone editing app, says a modern iPhone is enough for most photos most people take, while a bigger sensor, real optical zoom and a fast lens still win in low light, for distant subjects and for background blur. It places the retro compact in an odd middle: a real shutter button and a certain look, but usually a small sensor.

Even digicam sellers agree on the technical side. Vintage Camera Hut concedes that most modern phone cameras are sharper, faster and better in difficult light. Compact cameras were built around a small sensor that trades picture quality for size and simplicity, and they can usually save only JPEG files.

Owners choose digicams for how the photos feel. A 35mmc writer likes having a real flash instead of a phone LED, and Decaf Journal's Nikon Coolpix S600 reviewer says skin tones look more pleasing and the CCD compact generally makes a nicer image than a smartphone. Not everyone buys the film comparison: Casual Photophile's writer says digicams have a nostalgic look but do not truly give a film look. If you want the real thing, see film vs digital.

The revival started as a TikTok trend in the early 2020s and spread to eBay and Etsy, driven by Gen Z nostalgia and the Y2K aesthetic. Cost is part of it: digicams give a nostalgic look without the expense of film, and once you own the camera, extra shots cost next to nothing, while every roll of film has to be bought and developed.

NPR's July 2026 report ties the trend to a growing movement of people un-phoning or de-phoning their lives, and Canon told NPR that PowerShot sales jumped nearly sevenfold from 2022 to 2025. Even screen-free cameras sell: NPR says Camp Snap's screen-free camera, made for kids at summer camps, had just a viewfinder and a flash and no way to see the photos until it was hooked up to a computer, and then Gen Z and millennial adults started buying it.

Demand has pushed up prices on the models that went viral. Vice reported in 2025 that the Canon PowerShot ELPH 360 HS was going for $500 to $600 (Canon's most recent retail price was $360). New budget compacts sell too: Japanese retail data showed the Kodak PixPro FZ55 was the best-selling camera in Japan in 2025.