Kodak’s New $35 Film Camera Wants to Be Your First One

You know that feeling when you want to try shooting film, poke around online for a camera, and immediately bounce off a wall of jargon about apertures and light meters and $300 price tags? The new Kodak EC35 is built for the exact moment right before you give up. It costs $35, it fits in a pocket, and it asks almost nothing of you.

Announced July 19, the EC35 is a reloadable 35mm camera aimed squarely at people who have never loaded a roll of film in their lives. The whole pitch is right there in the price: this is meant to be as easy, and nearly as cheap, as a disposable, except you keep the camera and just swap in a new roll when you are done.

Simple by design, not by accident

There is almost nothing to fiddle with here, and that is the point. The EC35 has a 25mm lens with a fixed f/10 aperture and a single 1/100 second shutter speed. You do not set exposure, you do not focus, you point and you press. A slide cover pulls across the front to protect the lens and lock the shutter, so it will not fire off a random frame of the inside of your bag. There is a built-in flash for darker rooms, though you will need to feed it a single AA battery to power it.

Those fixed settings are the honest trade-off. A locked f/10 and 1/100 shutter means the EC35 wants daylight, and it will happily hand you a blurry or dark frame if you push it into a dim bar without the flash. But that simplicity is also exactly why a first-timer can hand it to a friend and get usable photos back. Nobody has to explain anything.

Where it sits in Kodak's cheap-camera lineup

The EC35 is made by Reto, the same company behind the Charmera, and it slots in as the budget floor of a growing family of low-cost Kodak-branded film cameras. For context, Reto's Kodak Snapic A1 runs $100, and the half-frame EKTAR H35 sells for around $50. At $35, the EC35 undercuts both and becomes the obvious starting point. If you want to walk out the door with film in it, there is a bundle that pairs the camera with a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 for $45.

It also comes in more colors than a camera this cheap has any right to: Midnight Black, Vanilla White, Butter Yellow, Lavender, Powder Blue, Blush Pink, and Avocado. That sounds like a small thing, but it is not. A camera you actually want to carry is a camera that gets used.

Who it's for

This is not the camera for the person who already knows they love film and wants control over their shots. Those folks have opinions about grain and glass, and they will outgrow a fixed f/10 lens in an afternoon. The EC35 is for the other person: the curious one who keeps meaning to try film and does not want to gamble a hundred bucks to find out if they like it. For $35, the answer to "should I just try this?" gets a lot easier. Load a roll, shoot it in the sun, and see if the results make you smile.