Best New Film Cameras 2026: 5 Picks, From $28

For a decade, buying a new film camera meant choosing between overpriced disposables and a handful of Lomography toy cameras. If you wanted anything serious, you were shopping used — competing with every other analog enthusiast on eBay for a camera that was manufactured before you were born. That's changing. 2026 has more genuinely interesting new film cameras than any year since the early 2010s, spanning every price point from $28 reloadables to autofocus compacts that aim to replace the Contax T2 sitting in your dreams.

Here's what's available right now and what's coming soon, with honest takes on who each camera is actually for.

Here is how the five main new film cameras of 2026 compare at a glance, with pricing and stock checked in July 2026 (details and sources in each section below).

Lomography Simple Use — $28 and Ready to Shoot

The Simple Use is Lomography's answer to the disposable camera, but with a twist: you can reload it. It ships pre-loaded with a roll of LomoChrome film (editions include Classicolor, Purple, and standard Color Negative), and once you've shot through those 36 frames, you pop the back open and load another roll of whatever you want.

At $28, it's the cheapest way to start shooting film today. The lens is a fixed-focus plastic element, and the built-in flash runs on a single AA battery. Nobody is pretending this produces tack-sharp images — the point is accessibility. Hand one to a friend who's curious about film. Bring it to a party. Throw it in a bag for a trip where you don't want to risk your main camera. The barrier to entry is basically zero. As of July 2026 the Simple Use still starts at $28, with editions ranging from $24.90 (LomoChrome Metropolis) to $27.90 (Classicolor) and spare 35mm rolls from $11.90, per Lomography and PetaPixel (March 4, 2026).

The reloadable design also makes it a surprisingly useful test body. If you want to try an unfamiliar film stock without committing a roll in your good camera, run it through the Simple Use first to see the color palette. You'll get a rough sense of the look before wasting frames on exposure mistakes with a stock you don't understand yet.

Pentax 17 — The Half-Frame That Started a Movement

The Pentax 17 arrived in 2024 as the first new production film camera from a major manufacturer in years, and it promptly sold out everywhere. Two years later, it's still one of the most talked-about cameras in the analog community — and still occasionally hard to find in stock. As of July 2026 it remains in production at a $499.95 MSRP, per Ricoh Imaging and B&H, but stock is still uneven — some US retailers list it as back-ordered rather than in stock, so treat availability as opportunistic rather than guaranteed.

The concept is straightforward: a half-frame 35mm camera, meaning each exposure uses half a standard frame. A 36-exposure roll gives you 72 shots in portrait orientation. The lens is a sharp 25mm f/3.5 (50mm equivalent in full-frame terms), and there's a zone-focus system with distance icons. Metering is automatic with a manual override mode, and the whole package is compact enough for a jacket pocket.

Half-frame is polarizing. Some photographers love the doubled frame count and the vertical-by-default composition. Others find the reduced negative size limiting, especially for large prints. If you mostly share on screens, the resolution is more than enough. If you want to print big, you'll feel the grain.

One note on the Pentax 17's future: designer Takeo Ryo, the driving force behind the camera, departed Ricoh/Pentax in early 2026. Whether this means the end of the line or simply a personnel change isn't clear yet. If you've been considering the Pentax 17, it might be wise not to wait too long — especially if a follow-up model was part of the original roadmap.

Analogue aF-1 — The Autofocus Compact Everyone Is Waiting For

The Analogue aF-1 might be the most anticipated camera in the film community right now. It's a new-production autofocus point-and-shoot — the category that used to include the Contax T2, Olympus Stylus Epic, Yashica T4, and Nikon 35Ti. Those cameras are all discontinued, and used prices reflect the scarcity: a clean Contax T2 fetches $1,500 or more, and even the once-affordable Olympus MJU has crept past $300.

The aF-1 aims to fill that gap with a newly designed autofocus lens, a compact body, and a price point that's significantly lower than the used alternatives. Details are still emerging as the camera moves through development, but the promise alone has generated serious excitement. An autofocus compact that you can buy new, with a warranty, without spending four figures — that's been the white whale of the film photography revival. As of July 2026 the aF-1 is priced at €449.99 to pre-order, and Analogue says deliveries to its waitlist began in Q1 2026 after a shutter-durability delay it detailed in February 2026, per Kosmo Foto; units are still reaching early backers in batches, so a pre-order today is a queue, not a shelf.

Whether the aF-1 delivers on that promise remains to be seen. Lens quality will be the deciding factor. The best vintage point-and-shoots earned their reputations with genuinely excellent optics — Zeiss and Zuiko glass that punched well above their category. A new camera needs to match that standard, not just the form factor.

Full review → Analogue aF-1: the first new point-and-shoot with LiDAR autofocus

Canon Waist-Level Concept — A Wildcard from CP+ 2026

Canon showed a waist-level viewfinder concept camera at CP+ 2026, surprising attendees who expected nothing but mirrorless announcements. The design references medium format cameras like the Hasselblad 500C, but in a 35mm body. Details beyond the concept are scarce — Canon hasn't confirmed production plans, lens specifications, or pricing. When Canon detailed the prototype at CP+ 2026 in February, it turned out not to be a film camera at all: reporters found a 1-inch, 6-megapixel digital sensor behind the finder, capturing an image projected onto a ground-glass screen to mimic a film-like texture, per PetaPixel (February 26, 2026). As of July 2026 it remains a concept with no announced production, price, or ship date.

Still, the fact that Canon is publicly exploring new film camera designs says something about where the market is heading. Five years ago, no major manufacturer would have devoted booth space to an analog concept. The demand is real enough that companies are paying attention.

MiNT InstantKon RF70 — Instant Film, Rangefinder Soul

MiNT has been making high-quality instant cameras for years, and the InstantKon RF70 is their rangefinder-styled model using Fujifilm Instax Wide film. Unlike most instant cameras, the RF70 has a real glass lens, manual exposure controls, and a coupled rangefinder for accurate focusing. It's an actual photographic tool, not a party novelty.

The Instax Wide format produces prints roughly the size of a credit card turned sideways — large enough to actually see detail and appreciate composition. Exposure control lets you dial in the look you want rather than hoping the automatic system guesses correctly. For photographers who love the immediacy of instant film but want more creative control, the RF70 is one of the few options that takes the medium seriously. As of July 2026 it remains available new directly from MiNT, which backs it with a five-year warranty; it launched at around $849 for the starter package, per DIY Photography — well above a plastic Instax camera, but in line with its glass lens and full manual controls.

New Film Cameras Since This Guide

This guide first published in March 2026, and the release calendar has not slowed since. A handful of arrivals belong on any current shortlist — with one honest caveat: 2026's wave of "new cameras" increasingly blends actual film cameras with digital cameras engineered to look and feel like film. Both kinds are below, labeled plainly so you know what you are buying.

The Lomography Fisheye No. 2 (2026) is a genuine film camera: a refreshed take on Lomography's circular-image fisheye that still shoots a 170-degree round frame on ordinary 35mm film for around $69, per Kosmo Foto. After the Simple Use, it is one of the cheapest new ways to shoot 35mm, and its all-or-nothing circular look is unlike anything else on this list — our full Fisheye No. 2 review covers the quirks.

The Kodak Charmera Millennium Edition landed in June 2026 as a Y2K remake of Reto's viral keychain camera, at $35 per blind box or $210 for a set of six, per PetaPixel (June 16, 2026). One important caveat: it is a 1.6-megapixel digital toy camera, not film. It earns a place here only because its Kodak branding leads people to expect film — our Charmera Millennium guide explains what it actually is.

The Rollei 35AF — a compact 35mm film camera with LiDAR autofocus, priced around $799 — has now had a full year in owners' hands. The verdict has settled: a genuinely good lens, sharp when stopped down to f/8–f/11, and reliable metering, held back by a weak viewfinder and autofocus that still misses at close range, per Amateur Photographer. Our one-year retrospective gathers what long-term users report.

The Yashica FX-D reached buyers in 2026 with an SLR-style body, a working "film" advance lever, and six built-in film simulations — but, like the Charmera, it records to a digital sensor rather than film, per PetaPixel. It is aimed at photographers who want the ritual of film without the developing costs. Our FX-D explainer breaks down what it is and what it is not.

The Used Market — Why New Cameras Matter

Used film camera prices remain stubbornly high and likely aren't coming back down. The Contax T2 at $1,500+, Olympus MJU at $300+, even basic SLRs like the Canon AE-1 selling for three times what they did five years ago — the supply is fixed and the demand keeps growing. Every camera that breaks or gets retired from circulation makes the remaining ones more expensive.

That's exactly why new production cameras matter, even imperfect ones. A $28 Lomography Simple Use and a $1,500 Contax T2 serve different purposes, obviously. But the expanding range of new options means you don't have to gamble on a 30-year-old camera with no warranty and questionable light seals to get into film photography. The entry points have never been more accessible.

Track Every Camera, Every Roll

Whichever camera you choose — new or used, half-frame or full-frame, autofocus or manual — the fundamentals of good film photography stay the same. You need to understand your exposures, learn your film stocks, and build the kind of intuition that only comes from reviewing your results alongside the data that produced them.

Pellica makes that process painless. Add your cameras to your gear list, create a roll when you load film, and log each frame as you shoot with a quick tap. The built-in light meter handles metering right in the app, and when your scans come back from the lab, you match them to your shot data. Frame by frame, roll by roll, you learn what works — and that's true whether you're shooting a $28 reloadable or a camera worth fifty times as much.