This three-camera round-up which has become a regular way for Kosmo Foto to end the year. Last year I picked three film cameras that were completely new – though it turned out that one of them only made it into production at the end of this year.
For 2025, I’ve put the spotlight on another new camera – one that created quite a stir when it was announced in October.
The others making this list are compact cameras with a few more years under their hood but still deserving of a place in this year’s top three. In fact, one of them is one of my discoveries of this year – a cheap and cheerful plastic fantastic that you should be able to find for spare change. Consider this a late Christmas present!
Canon Sure Shot Sleek
The Canon Sure Shot Sleek (aka the Autoboy F XL in Japan or the Prima Mini II in Europe) was released in 1996 as a replacement to another under-rated Canon point-and-shoot, the Canon Sure Shot M.
The Sure Shot Sleek seems to have flown under the radar while bloggers and influencers have hyped up cameras such as the Olympus Mju-II or the Yashica T4. It’s a clean, pebble-shaped compact camera with a 32mm f/3.5 lens recessed into the body behind a sliding lens cover.
Adam Scott, who runs film brand Dubblefilm and used to be part of Lomography’s UK team, told me years ago to keep my eyes peeled for this cameras as it was one of his favourites. I eventually found one for a decent price – and then got handed one as a gift by my friend Stephen Thrift aka “Thrifty”, an enthusiastic camera collector and photo-walker based near London.
The Sure Shot Sleek’s specs aren’t going to blow you away – the fastest shutter speed is only 1/250th – but the 32mm lens is sharp and contrasty. The camera’s control dial allows you to shoot in fully auto mod, or force the flash on or switch it off – and you can shoot an entire roll with the flash off, which comes in handy if you don’t want to telegraph yourself with a burst of flash while snapping on the street.
Even better, the ISO works with film up to ISO 3200, allowing you to shoot higher-speed ISOs without flash. The camera focuses as closes as 45cm too – only 1.5ft.
The Sure Shot Sleek has been a bit of a discovery this year, small enough to stuff in a pocket and with a lens that’s streets ahead of most cheap compacts. As I type this, I’ve taken the Sleek on a quick trip to India – a destination with a roll’s worth of photo ops around every corner. The Sure Shot Sleek is well worth considering as a take anywhere compact.
Read more:
Review on Camera Go Camera
Profile on Canon Camera Museum
Hanimex 35 HS
As a Kiwi, the Hanimex name takes me right back to days in front of the TV, with local camera shop ads urging you to snap up the latest deals on “Hanimex Prakticas’ and the like. This Australian importer chose cameras and lenses from all sorts of manufacturers and sold them in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere under the Hanimex name.
Hanimex sold quality kit, and it sold dirt cheap cameras too. One design it rebadged was the Halina 150, a simple 35mm compact made by Haking of Hong Kong in the 1980s.
Like the Halina 150, the Hanimex 35 HS is a super simple camera aimed at holidaymakers and casual photographers. Once the film is loaded, the little Hanimex is a no-fuss point-and-shoot – with one little tweak that makes it more versatile than many.
The camera is focus free from 5ft (1.5m) to infinity, with a single shutter speed. But the camera does have a useful little feature. You can choose from three different weather settings – sunny, cloudy/sun and cloudy – which will change the aperture. This works fine with 100/200 ISO in bright weather and would also work with 400-ISO film in autumn and winter.
The other surprise? The Hanimex’s lens is fantastic for a camera as cheap as this. It’s hard to find much information on the lens design, but Haking’s designers did a sterling job packing such a cheap camera with such a good lens.
I took the little Hanimex on a trip to Germany and Switzerland on the summer and was really impressed with some of the results, which you can see below. As the camera is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2026, expect to see a review of it on Kosmo Foto soon.
Read more:
Review on Camera Go Camera
Review on Canny Cameras
Lomography LOMO MC-A
The Lomography MC-A was – along with the still-yet-to-appear Analogue aF-1 – the biggest surprise of the year.
The Austrian photography brand had been working on a premium compact for some time and managed to keep its development a secret until its announcement in late October. The camera was leagues away from the usual variation on its simple camera design, and far more advanced than the Soviet-era automatic exposure camera and its spin-offs that had been the cornerstone of the company since 1992.
The LOMO MC-A appeared to be Lomography’s attempt at a premium compact camera like the Contax T2 or the Minolta TC-1, albeit with a few flashes of Lomography heritage.
It’s an impressively robust camera built around a metal shell, with a 32mm f/2.8 lens with five elements. You can choose either autofocus or a zone focus, with the focus zone selector mirroring that on the original LOMO LC-A from the early 1980s.
The camera can shoot in aperture-priority mode or fully manual, and has +2/-2 exposure compensation. You can even shoot the camera in fully automatic mode by choosing the P mark on the aperture dial, similar to that on some of Minox’s 35mm compacts.
I’ve had the LOMO MC-A on extended loan since a few weeks after the announcement and will publish a proper review in the new year. It’s a camera of admirable ambition that has the odd frustrating foible – film advance isn’t as reliable as it should be – but the resulting shots when everything goes well are impressive. It’ll be interesting to see what the market makes of this camera next year – and whether anyone else comes up with a camera to rival Lomography’s features.
Read more:
First impressions: Lomography LOMO MC-A
A closer look at Lomography’s LOMO MC-A compact
Review on The Darkroom
Previous Three Cameras posts:
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
