Camp Snap: the brand that took the screen off the camera
Born for summer camps where screens are banned, Camp Snap makes screen-free digital cameras: you frame, you shoot, and you discover the pictures later on a computer.
Camp Snap makes cameras that do not show the photos. No screen on the back of the body: a viewfinder, a shutter button, and pictures that you discover later, once the camera is plugged into a computer or a phone. The principle comes from a summer camp in Ontario, and it ended up winning people over well beyond children. According to Modern Retail, more than a million cameras have been sold since the brand launched in 2023.
The story
According to the brand, Camp Snap is the work of Brian and Melanie, two former campers from Toronto, Ontario. For several summers they sent their two sons to Camp Timberlane, a summer camp in Ontario, with disposable cameras that produced few good photos. They also found that there was no screen-free digital camera designed for children. The company is now based in Hermosa Beach, California.
Modern Retail dates the launch to 2023: the idea was to help children take photos during stays, such as camps, where screens and connected devices are not allowed. The magazine quotes the company’s president, Trevor George, who now sees the camera taken up by hikers, sports fans and adults looking for less screen time.
The range
The core of the range is the screen-free digital camera, in several generations. The second, the Camp Snap 2, came out in June 2026. According to the brand, it offers six filters that you change directly on the camera, with no app, a setting locked out of the box for young photographers (this is the Camp Lock system), a body fifteen per cent thinner than the first model, a thread for optical filters and a tripod mount.
The CS-Pro, unveiled in September 2025, is the high-end version: according to the brand, a 16-megapixel output, a xenon flash and a four-filter selector, in a rangefinder-style body. The CS-8, unveiled in July 2025, applies the same logic to video: a camcorder with no playback screen, inspired by Super 8, which records to an SD card.
What the brand stands for
The mission Camp Snap puts forward fits in one sentence: to help children stay present in the moment and engage fully with their surroundings, without being distracted by a screen. According to the brand, its cameras encourage social life, outdoor play, exploration and creativity.
The company’s president puts it differently to Modern Retail: the day after an evening or an activity, you plug the camera in, and looking through the photos becomes a moment of joy. In his words, the best ones are often the blurriest, the ones with the funniest faces.
The brand also cultivates a taste for the look of film. An online tool lets you create your own filters, and the cameras accept the brand’s own straps and lanyards as well as those of other makers.
Right now
In September 2026, Camp Snap unveiled the 110D, a pocket-sized digital camera with no screen, whose long, narrow shape recalls that of the 110 cameras that appeared in 1972. It offers an 8-megapixel sensor, five filters set on the body and a microSD card already installed; it comes in black and silver or in white and orange. The brand also offers new accessories, such as wrist straps.
On the commercial side, Modern Retail says the brand makes about ninety per cent of its sales on its own website, has sold out of its flagship camera at least twenty times, and can also be found at Target, REI, Best Buy and Hudson News, as well as in tourist-town shops. The magazine adds that the brand does not publish its revenue figures.
Why we like it
We like the clarity of the stance: a camera that shows nothing of what it has just taken, and gives picture-taking back its share of surprise. At Camp Snap, the bold colours, the retro shapes and the filters set on the body all tell the same idea, that of a simple object that leaves room for the moment.
Exactly the kind of brand we’d love to come across on O!deal one day.
Camp Snap products we’ve spotted
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Camp Snap 110D: the screen-free pocket camera in the shape of a 110 film camera
A long, slim body inherited from the 110 cameras of 1972, an 8-megapixel sensor, five filters set on the body and a microSD card already in place: the 110D never shows the photo it has just taken.