Hipstamatic? Really? Yes, apparently, that’s the case. The brand has been doing several teases of a new camera coming soon. Hipstamatic, which is an app for your camera phone to take really fun retro-style images, often calls their latest products “new cameras.” But the marketing around their latest product seems to imply that it’s actually a hardware device of some sort. Specifically, it seems to be a variant of a Leica camera. Considering all the teases and the language involved, this one could actually have a bit of weight to it.
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It Looks Like a Leica
All of this starts with Leica. This isn’t the first time that Leica has licensed their own products before. At Photokina 2018, we got to play with the new Zenit M series camera. After reporting on our findings, which you can see here, we never ended up getting a full-production unit for testing. And more importantly, we also never got to test some of the really cool lenses that they created. However, this was a clone of a Leica digital M series camera.
Leica themselves have also done this many times with Panasonic’s cameras. And even recently, with L-mount lenses, Leica has rebranded a lot of Sigma optics and put them into their own unique lens bodies. Those of us who’ve been around even longer remember when Hasselblad literally rebranded the Sony A99 camera.
That’s a long way of saying that reenvisions of cameras are like the cinema world’s reboots and remakes. However, in some cases, we all know that Spike Lee didn’t need to touch the movie Old Boy.
In a post on Instagram, they teased that December 14th might is going to be the day when we find out more information about this latest product.
A Hipstamatic Camera Could Be a Hardware Item
Several folks in the comments on their posts talk about how this might actually be a physical hardware camera. And if that’s the case, then we’re incredibly shocked. The company, which even did a sort of relaunch earlier this year, might be open to trying new things. By making an actual camera, it seems like they’ll be going after a different audience. It makes sense for the brand. The aesthetic of their photographs targets those who adore the vintage and toy camera look. So why not go for a hardware product? Film, after all, has made a big comeback. But this new Hipstamatic camera looks digital in so many different ways.
Do We Really Need More Cameras?
All of this then opens up the question, do we need more cameras? The answer is yes and no. We need more different cameras from all the variations of Sony’s product line on the market. That’s why Fujifilm and the Nikon Zf stand out so much. We don’t need more variants of the same cameras out there. To get that, more brands need to come into the space.
We welcome Hipstamatic coming into the camera space if they happen to be making an actual, physical product. We also hope that it differentiates itself enough from all the rest. A camera that takes their image recipes and lets you apply it to a full-frame or APS-C camera would be really cool. And if it’s in M-mount, then that’s even more cool!
All of this also makes me wonder if it’s a variant of the PIXI cameras.