Fujifilm QuickSnap Turns 40 and Two New Cameras Are on the Way

There’s a very particular kind of magic in not knowing how a photo turned out. No preview, no retake, no 47 attempts at getting the light right. Just click, wind on, and wait. If that sounds oddly appealing right now, you’re not alone — and Fujifilm’s QuickSnap™ is very much having a moment.

This year marks 40 years since the QuickSnap™ first launched as the world’s first single-use camera, and to mark the milestone, Fujifilm is celebrating with two brand-new additions to the iconic range. Both are coming later this summer and into autumn, and honestly, they couldn’t be timed better.

More than 1.7 billion QuickSnap™ cameras have been sold worldwide since 1986 — which tells you everything you need to know about why this little camera has endured long past the smartphone era. It isn’t nostalgia for its own sake. It’s the slowness of it. The intention. The fact that you actually have to choose your shot.

The one for the beach bag: QuickSnap Active™

From August 2026, the new QuickSnap Active™ will be available at an RRP of €25.99. It’s waterproof to depths of up to 10 metres, which makes it ideal for beach days, pool trips, snorkelling adventures, camping weekends and any outdoor occasion where you’d never dream of bringing your phone near the water.

If you’ve ever stood at the edge of a pool shouting “somebody take a photo of the kids!” while clutching your iPhone in a panic, this is the one for you. Chuck it in the beach bag, forget about it, and let the kids go wild. The photos will be a gorgeous mess of splashing and squinting and you’ll love every one of them.

The one for the creative among us: QuickSnap Black and White™

Coming in September 2026, the QuickSnap Black and White™ (€23.99 RRP) arrives pre-loaded with black-and-white film. It’s made for portraits, city breaks, market mornings, quiet everyday scenes — anything that benefits from that timeless, unhurried feel that colour photography sometimes strips away.

It requires absolutely no technical knowledge. No settings to fiddle with, no filters to apply afterwards. Just point, shoot and hand it in to be developed. The results have that beautiful quality of something found rather than engineered — which, if you’ve been scrolling through heavily edited grids lately, might feel like a proper breath of fresh air.

Why film photography is back — and why it makes sense for mums

We take an extraordinary number of photos these days. Most of them live and die on our camera roll without ever being looked at again. The QuickSnap™ flips that completely. There’s a fixed number of shots, no instant preview, and a genuine wait before you see the results. That constraint, weirdly, is what makes it so satisfying.

For families especially, there’s something lovely about handing a QuickSnap™ to a child and letting them document a holiday or a day out entirely on their own terms. The prints that come back are genuinely theirs — wonky angles, blurred dog snouts, one extremely dramatic close-up of a sandwich. Framing-worthy, all of it.

Both the QuickSnap Active™ and QuickSnap Black and White™ will be available from Fujifilm stockists nationwide from their respective launch dates. If you’re planning ahead for the rest of the summer or thinking about a lovely autumnal gift, it’s well worth keeping an eye out.

Forty years on, it turns out the best memories really are the ones worth waiting for.