Point and shoot

The digital point-and-shoot camera is dead; long live the digital point-and-shoot camera

According to the website Fujilove, the peak sales of point-and-shoot digital cameras were in 2008, with more than 120 million units sold globally.

A year earlier, however, Apple had released a new gadget called the iPhone; it and its competitors would soon spell the downfall of point-and-shoot cameras. With current smartphone camera technology, there is no point to having a separate, stand-alone camera to worry about.

Or is there?

Some months ago, I saw a Facebook ad for a small, digital point-and-shoot camera. I wanted one. I’m not sure why — if I’m being completely honest with myself, I think I came up with the use cases after I had already decided I wanted the product. Sometimes you want to take photos and not be distracted by your phone. Sometimes you are using your phone for something else. It’s less risky to hand a $50 point-and-shoot to a stranger and ask them to take your photo than it is to hand your $500 phone, which also contains all sorts of sensitive information about you. (The phone inevitably goes to sleep while the subjects are posing, so the volunteer photographer has to hand it back to you to unlock it.)