Singer Ed Sheeran’s ‘New Thing’ is Photography With a Compact Camera

Ed Sheeran onstage in Bhutan happily snapping away on his new compact camera which he promises to keep using. | @teddysphotos

British singer Ed Sheeran says he has ditched his iPad and swapped it for a compact camera “like it’s 1997.”

The pop star’s recent Insagram posts have been camera-centric as he uses what looks like a high-end Sony RX100 to take snapshots of his South Asian tour.

“I like taking pictures now with my camera it’s my new thing,” Sheeran captions an Instagram post from two days ago. In it, he shares short video clips taken on the streets of Hyderabad, India, and pictures of friends and family.

Digital Camera World notes that Sheeran is something of a technophobe: he hasn’t owned a smartphone since 2015 telling the BBC that the device negatively affected his mental health. “I got really, really overwhelmed and sad with the phone. I just spent my whole time in a very low place,” he said in 2022.

Compact cameras, also known as point-and-shoot cameras, were once very popular: in 2010, they accounted for 52% of all photos taken. But by 2016, point-and-shoot sales were 10% of what they were at their peak in 2008.

But recently compact cameras have been having a resurgence: in November, Japanese retail analyst firm BCN+R said that “compact cameras still account for more than 60% of the number of cameras sold.”

Sheeran, with nearly 50 million Instagram followers, will not harm the format’s popularity that began increasing in 2022 when members of Generation Z discovered its lo-fi aesthetic and it became a trend across TikTok on Instagram.

In Canon’s recent financial results, the company notes that the “popularity of compact cameras that can easily capture images that differ from those of smartphones is growing among young people.” The Japanese giant says it has seen a “buildup of orders, mainly for higher priced models like the PowerShot G7 X Mark III.”

If you’re inspired by Sheeran and want to buy your own digital compact camera then why not check out PetaPixel’s Best Compact Cameras guide.