2025 Was the Year of the Photographic Experience

There are so many fantastic, capable digital cameras available these days. Nearly every new camera from all the major manufacturers can take great photos, has reliable autofocus, and offers a competitive feature set. Ultimately, the biggest differentiator between most cameras is the experience of using them. 2025 delivered many new cameras that not only provide a great experience, but a different one that celebrates the act of photography itself and what it means to capture photos.

As my colleague and friend Richard Butler wrote this week at DPReview, 2025 delivered many fascinating cameras. There were the usual suspects, the high-end, feature-rich models that do everything better than the model that came before. But then there were the cameras that, instead of going spec-chasing, opted to double down on delivering photographers with something different. Not always better, but distinct.

Even Sony, ever the practical company, brought its RX1R series out of hibernation in 2025 to deliver a premium camera that goes all-in on the photographic experience. If there is ever a canary in the coal mine squawking that photographers want fun, albeit impractical, cameras, it’s the RX1R III’s long-awaited arrival. And you know what, I love it, and I hope 2025 was merely setting the stage for a 2026 that delivers even more fresh and fun cameras, even if they aren’t going to be the go-to choice for pros or sport the richest feature set.

As Richard writes, and I agree, the flurry of unusual and interesting cameras is almost certainly the result of the shrinking camera industry overall. Smartphones supplanted a massive chunk of the camera market, delivering good-enough photos and videos for casual photographers. Why buy a dedicated camera with small-ish sensors and ho-hum lenses when the phone you already own can do nearly as well?

While this development has generally been bad news for camera makers’ bottom lines, it has also spurred innovation and forced companies to revisit what makes a dedicated camera valuable to consumers. There are far fewer cameras made and sold now than 15 years ago, but the cameras we have now are not just excellent; they are designed to embrace what makes photography special. Cameras are more interesting now because they have to be. It’s not enough for a camera to take good photos now, it has to make people want to take photos, and that requires more than a new sensor, better autofocus, and some new features.

Take, for example, one of the first cameras released this year, the Sigma BF. While you can debate whether it is the best camera for most photographers, you absolutely cannot dispute that the Sigma BF offers an interesting take on what a camera is, what is essential to the photographic experience, and what makes photography fun.

The Sigma BF is missing many features that most cameras include, such as an electronic viewfinder, a hotshoe, and a wide array of buttons and controls. What it isn’t missing is soul or thoughtfulness. Sigma, under the direction of its passionate CEO, Kazuto Yamaki, considered every aspect of modern camera design and created a camera that prioritizes the photo-taking experience. The Sigma BF adheres to a very specific concept of what a camera can and should be, and it’s unlike anything else on the market right now.

While the Sigma BF is still a capable, albeit less versatile full-frame camera than something like the Panasonic Lumix S9 it shares its imaging pipeline with, the next camera I want to highlight is not going to win any awards for its photographic acumen. The Fujifilm X half is many things, an excellent camera from a technical perspective, not among them.

I’m not disparaging the X half and its tiny image sensor and mediocre built-in lens too much, plenty of others have already done that for me. However, I do want to briefly discuss how the X half introduces interesting ideas. More than any other digital camera to date, the Fujifilm X half wants to be used like an analog camera. It goes so far as to offer a shooting mode that locks the user into a specific Film Simulation for an entire “roll” of film, and doesn’t even let the user review the photos as they shoot. It’s rare for a camera not just to limit you, but to actively celebrate its barriers.

The X half isn’t the only interesting camera Fujifilm released this year. The Fujifilm GFX100RF is also highly unusual, and a camera that I don’t think would have existed five years ago. When Fujifilm debuted its medium-format GFX system nearly a decade ago, the focus was squarely on image quality that goes beyond full-frame. The GFX system and nearly all its cameras have promised an experience like that of a typical full-frame camera, albeit with superior image quality thanks to the larger image sensor.

The GFX100RF sticks rigidly to the philosophy of medium-format quality in a compact, portable package. To that end, the GFX100RF features a built-in 28mm equivalent f/4 lens. Yes, f/4, not f/2.8. Add in that the GFX100RF omits in-body image stabilization, and it’s easy to start wondering, “This camera costs how much?” But Fujifilm wanted the GFX100RF to be as small and lightweight as possible, ensuring that photographers would feel comfortable taking it everywhere, and that meant leaving certain desirable features on the cutting-room floor.

The camera’s promised flexibility arrives not through the use of a zoom lens, but by taking full advantage of its big 102-megapixel image sensor, which enables simple and effective in-camera cropping and aspect ratios, each of which has dedicated physical controls. If photographers want more versatility, better performance, and faster lenses, they can get one of Fujifilm’s interchangeable lens GFX cameras.

Fujifilm isn’t the only company that removed or abandoned certain features in pursuit of making a camera that served a very precise audience and delivered a distinct photographic experience. Ricoh did it too with the very popular new GR IV premium compact camera.

The GR IV is small, lightweight, and great. But Ricoh hemmed and hawed about what it could do to its new GR Series camera while preserving what makes the GR experience special.

“If we allow ourselves to make the camera a bit bigger, we can do many things. But we don’t prioritize that because GR should always be with you and compactness is key to that,” Kazunobu Saiki, general manager of the Ricoh Camera Business Division, told PetaPixel for an upcoming series of stories on Ricoh and the GR IV.

Ricoh considered adding a flash to the GR IV, but that would have made it too big and hurt the overall experience. Ricoh thought about making it more weather-resistant, but again, that would have compromised the design philosophy. The Ricoh GR IV had to be the camera it is because that is the camera that would deliver the experience that Ricoh wanted.

The cameras above are all-in on a certain experience of taking photos. They don’t chase the latest and greatest specifications, nor do they purport to offer their users professional-grade performance. Save for perhaps the X half, they also don’t chase trends. They are each bold cameras that reflect the visions of their creators to give passionate photographers something to be excited to pick up and use.

Perhaps no camera in 2025 is quite so bold as the Leica M EV1, a camera whose entire existence is based on the concept of delivering a fundamentally different way to capture photos. The Leica M-System has always been about the rangefinder experience, which has enticed countless photographers to be separated from large quantities of hard-earned money. The Leica M-System, from analog models over 70 years ago to the current digital M11 series, has delivered fundamentally the same experience of capturing photos.

The new Leica M EV1, however, throws the rangefinder to the wind in favor of an electronic viewfinder, entirely changing the way photographers see and shoot photos. In a year when many companies delivered cameras that change how photographers shoot, I don’t think any company offered a more drastically different type of experience relative to its historic approach than Leica did with the M EV1.

Photo companies were all-in on cameras that prioritize experience in 2025, and I think that’s the smartest move any manufacturer made last year. It has not always been easy to believe that camera manufacturers love photography as much as I do, but it is right now. Photography is special, and I think camera manufacturers are fully embracing what makes it special in the first place. It’s not megapixels. It’s not AI. It’s not even cutting-edge features. It’s the act of taking photos and what it feels like when everything clicks.

Image credits: Header photo created using assets licensed via Depositphotos.