Falling Back in Love With My Y2K Camera
Haven’t you heard? The 2000s are back in fashion.
I am the OG Y2K girl; I wore hip-hugging skinny jeans and pressed my hair with a steam straightener before school every morning. I spent my college days downloading The OC episodes illegally on Limewire and updating my MySpace profile. You can’t get more Y2K than that.
But what irks me the most about the return of the 2000s isn’t so much the fashion or the music—it’s the cameras.
Digicams apparently are the new “film.” I have to disagree. Film photography is timeless; analog photography has not changed much over the years because it was already perfected before my time. The concept of “HD” and resolution was also not relevant because photos on celluloid (or glass or tin) will always be high definition—it just depends on how you digitize it.
So having “the kids” on YouTube trying to push 2-megapixel Japanese pocket cameras as a “newly-discovered” alternative to film photography blows my mind. Use your goddamn iPhone and add a film filter if you need an affordable substitute for film photography!
Well, isn’t that a sign of me getting old, shouting at the kids to get off my proverbial analog lawn?
But one camera that I still hold dear from the 2000s (OK, late 2000s), both for sentimental value and just because it’s a damn great camera, is the Canon PowerShot G10 from 2009.
Me holding my trusty G10 while on a work trip to Phuket in 2009.
I bought it after I left my first job at a magazine to become a freelance writer for several travel publications and websites. I needed a camera as I no longer had access to a staff photographer who could accompany me to places. I chose the G10 because it was new at the time, and the G9 was highly rated. I eventually graduated to a DSLR (Canon 550D) but the G10 would always be considered my buddy as I started my career and passion for photography.
Here are some photos I took during my stint as a freelance writer in 2009-2010.
Playing around with it now that I know more about photography made me realize how great this little camera is. OK, its sensor is tiny but it has all the functions needed to rival other professional cameras. It shoots RAW, has a full manual mode, and a viewfinder! F2.8 is good enough, while the whopping 14.7 megapixels in an entry-level camera was almost unheard of at the time (the later model G12 went back down to 10MP for some reason.) There’s even a macro mode.
I took it out for a spin in 2023 yesterday and the photos from this 14-year-old machine are not bad at all. Just avoid higher ISO unless you prefer the pixelated “Y2K look” (like in the first three photos below) then it’s as good as any modern entry-level camera. F2.8 can also give you some nice bokeh that today’s iPhone’s portrait mode cannot achieve.
The bottom line is: don’t waste your money on overhyped 2000s digicams. If you have one in storage (or if your gasp parents still do) feel free to use it and give it some love after years of neglect.
But if you must shell out 4-5,000 baht for a decades-old camera that was worth mere hundreds a few years ago, then this “prosumer” Canon G line would give you more bang for your buck, and you wouldn’t look dumb using it.
