Reto Project announced the Kodak EC35 on July 17, 2026, a pocketable 35mm film camera priced at $35 (or £35 in the UK), available to order from its product page at kodak.retopro.co (Kosmofoto; Engadget).

The EC35 has a 25mm lens with a fixed aperture of f/10 and a fixed shutter speed of 1/100 second. That means the lens opening and the amount of time the camera captures light never change. You cannot adjust brightness or darkness the way you can on a more advanced camera. A built-in flash, powered by a single AA battery, helps when lighting is poor. A slide cover protects the lens when the camera is not in use and also locks the shutter button so you don't accidentally take photos inside a bag or pocket (Engadget).

The camera comes in seven colors: Midnight Black, Vanilla White, Butter Yellow, Lavender, Powder Blue, Blush Pink, and Avocado. A bundle pairing the EC35 with a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 film is offered at $45 (Engadget).

Reto Project, the Hong Kong-based company behind the camera, has made several Kodak-branded film cameras before. Its earlier releases include the Kodak Charmera, the Kodak Snapic A1 at $100, and the EKTAR H35 at $50. The company says its mission is to "reinvent film cameras and make film photography flourish again by creating affordable, well-tailored cameras" (Reto Project). Engadget described the EC35 as "a new Kodak-branded camera from Charmera-maker Reto" (Engadget).

Because the aperture and shutter speed are fixed, the only exposure choices you have are which film speed to load and whether to turn the flash on or off. On a sunny day with ISO 400 film, the camera produces a reasonably well-exposed photo. Indoors or in dim light, the flash is essentially mandatory. Think of it like a camera that is permanently set to one mode: it works well for outdoor daytime shots and flash-lit indoor snapshots, but it is not built for situations where you need control over how bright or dark the photo turns out.

At $35, the EC35 is priced well below Reto's own EKTAR H35 ($50) and Snapic A1 ($100). The $45 bundle with Kodak Ultramax 400 film effectively gives you the camera and a roll of film for a small discount. This puts the EC35 in the price range of an impulse purchase or a gift, where film cameras usually compete with disposable single-use models rather than reusable ones.

The broader context is that film photography has been growing again for several years, driven largely by younger people who never grew up using analog cameras. Reto's approach targets them directly: low cost, bold colors, an operation simple enough that no technical knowledge is needed, and the Kodak brand name to reassure buyers who may not have heard of Reto itself.

What the EC35 offers is a very easy way to start shooting on real, reusable film. A $35 camera you can reload and reuse, with a built-in flash and a protective slide cover, is in practical terms a direct substitute for a $20 disposable camera, with the advantage that you don't throw it away after one roll. Whether that will convince people who currently buy disposables, or whether it will mainly appeal to people already curious about film, is something the market will answer. But the price and the design choices line up with Reto's stated mission, and the camera's existence suggests the company believes the audience for film photography keeps growing.