I said to someone at work today that there's been an entire generation who has only known media consumption and creation through digital means.

This isn't a new observation and also it's not quite true.

Colouring books, sellotape, straws. Cutting shapes out of paper. Everyone born in the UK will have done these things as a kid.

But in 2025, creating and using music, photography and art from the age of probably 10 to adult is predominantly digital and predominantly performed on the same buttonless black-backed square of glass.

The price of secondhand film-based cameras is going up. A camera bought on eBay a year ago for £50 is now £150. Opening the back of the camera and exposing the film and then paying to have it developed anyway just in case is about to become an experience for a whole new group of people.

And we all know about the rise of vinyl over the last decade.

More horrifying is the rise of the cassette tape on places like Bandcamp where they're sold both as collector's editions and regular "this is how you listen to our music" releases.

While looking at other dedicated film cameras today, I got linked to a "modern" camera, the Sigma BF. It's probably one of the ugliest things I've ever seen, hearkening back to Zune-levels of aesthetic design that fundamentally misunderstand the role objects play in our lives. A design only fit for a dystopian near-future.

Turns out not all dedicated physical objects for creativity are good.