Sneak peek: How the compact film camera came back from the dead

Hello all

 Over the past several weeks, I've been working on an article on one of the most surprising – and welcome – developments of the last few years.

Less than a decade ago, Japan Camera Hunter's Bellamy Hunt stood up in front of a crowd at an event in Finland and outlined plans for a new premium compact film camera. It was a part plea and part challenge: Hunt had seen the rising prices of premium models like the Contax T2 and Minolta TC-1, and realised many of these cameras were getting long in the tooth. New cameras were needed to sustain analogue photography in the decades to come, and he believed one of the big Japanese camera makers would recognise it.

Hunt's 2017 gamble didn't pay off – none of the marquee names were interested, and his blueprints remained a paper dream. But over the pandemic years and analogue photography's gradual second wind, other, smaller camera makers began to have similar thoughts.

In less than two years, three different compact film cameras have been released. The Pentax 17 was first, the result of months-long research by the Pentax Film Project and headed by enthusiastic designer Takeo Suzuki. The Pentax 17 nodded at various classic designs from Pentax's past but was utterly unlike any other camera that had sported the Pentax name – half-frame with zone-focus, for starters.

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MiNT Camera's Rollei 35AF followed soon after, a modern rethink of the classic Rollei 35 compact camera first released in the 1960s. MiNT's redesign added autofocus, an internal flash and a computerised exposure system, but still kept many elements of the original's quirky design.

Then, at the start of 2025, another camera appeared, not from a traditional camera maker but from a camera shop and film lab in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Analogue's aF-1 is inspired by highly regarded compact cameras like the Olympus Mju-II and the Pentax Espio Mini, complete with the classic sliding front panel. It was initially expected to be released at the end of last year, but analogue have admitted some aspects of the camera's design are taking longer to get right; it's expected to launch towards the end of 2026.

And finally, Lomography entered the fray with the LOMO MC-A, its first 35mm autofocus camera (though with zone focus as a back up). The LOMO MC-A is a very impressive camera in the flesh, made mostly of metal, and with the choice of full manual, aperture priority and fully automatic shooting modes. If you've ever wondered what might happen if a Contax T2 and a LOMO LC-A became very good friends… well, wonder no more. Kosmo Foto was kindly given two of these cameras to test (the first turned out to have some unfortunate issues) and a review will be popping up on the blog in the next few weeks.

After the LOMO MC-A's announcement, I felt that this burst of activity deserved some proper investigation – what had inspired these camera makers to bring new designs to life when the major companies couldn't be bothered. So I contacted the teams behind those four cameras – as well as Bellamy Hunt – to get the inside story on how the cameras took shape.

 TKO very graciously gave me an interview for the piece. His insight into the camera – which turns two years old in the summer – was fascinating. Here's an example.

"Normally, in design work, the engineering and design teams communicate closely to maintain a balance between aesthetics and mechanics," TKO says.

"However, with this camera, we had no idea whether the mechanisms could be realised at all. So, I asked the engineers to prioritise completing the mechanical design first. I promised them that no matter what shape it ended up taking, I would create a well-balanced, cool-looking camera.

"The internal mechanism we ended up with had a very unique shape one that was challenging as a design material," TKO says. "The exterior design was heavily influenced by the internal structure. I believe that’s why the camera ended up looking both retro and modern at the same time. Again, balancing these elements was extremely difficult, but I truly enjoyed the design process.

The piece goes live on Kosmo Foto on Friday morning UK time – I hope you find it interesting. The finished piece is nearly 6,500 words long!  

Thanks to TKO, to Ralph Tilon at Analogue, Bellamy Hunt of Japan Camera Hunter, Gary Ho at MiNT Camera and Lomography for their help.